American 

Towns 

and 

People 


larrison  Rhod e s 


REEF 

POINT 

GARDENS 

LIBRARY 


The  Gift  of  Beatrix  Farrand 

to  the  General  Library 
University  of  California,  Berkeley 


AMERICAN 

and  PEOPLE 


The  White  House  is  a  sort  of  National   shrine. 


American 
Towns  and  People 


by  Harrison  Rhodes 

Author  of 
"High  Life,"  "The  Flight  to  Eden"  etc. 


With  Illustrations 


Robert  M.  McBride  &>  Co. 
1920 


Copyright,       1920,      by 
ROBERT    M.    McBRiDE    6"    Co. 


COPYRIGHT, 

1910,  1915,  1916,  1917,  1918,  1919,  1920, 
BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS 


Printed       in       the 
United     States     of     America 


Published,      1920 


1 1 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I.  WHY  Is  A  BOSTONIAN?      ..... 

II.  WHO  Is  A  PHILADELPHIAN?     ....  27 

III.  WHAT  Is  A  NEW-YORKER?      ....  53 

IV.  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  CHICAGO     ....  79 
V.  WASHINGTON,  THE  COSMOPOLITAN     .      .  101 

VI.  BALTIMORE    .........  131 

VII.  Is  THERE  A  WEST?      ......  153 

VIII.  THE  HOTEL  GUEST      ......  175 

IX.  THE  HIGH  KINGDOM  OF  THE  MOVIES     .  199 

X.  THE  AMERICAN  CHILD      .....  227 

XL  THE  SOCIETY  WOMAN  ......  253 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

The  White  House  is  a  sort  of  National  Shrine, 

Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

In  Scollay  Square  the  old  tradition  is  less  in  evidence  9 

A  street-corner  seeker  after  truth 23 

An  early  morning  rite 35 

The  park  affords  charming  vistas  of  the  city  beyond  59 

Vast  aqueducts  of  traffic  span  the  sky  ....  75 

The  Windy  City  on  a  windy  day 85 

Chicago  River,  now  a  clear  blue  flood,  flowing  under 

Rush  Street  Bridge 97 

The  austere  towers  of  the  Smithsonian  Institute  .  121 

Belair  Market 129 

Traces  of  old  Spain  have  a  winning,  half-pathetic 

charm 157 

A  superannuated  cowboy  of  about  eighty  .  .  .  171 
The  old  hotel  office  was  what  the  forum  perhaps 

was  to  Rome 185 

Stimulating  a  vampire  with  strains  from  Strauss  .  203 

The  reformer  is  an  ever-present  affliction  .  .  .  219 
Women  of  the  highest  position  feel  deeply  the  beauty 

of  the  Bolshevik  doctrine  255 


AMERICAN 

and  PEOPLE 


Why  Is  a  Bostonian? 

THE  author  of  the  "Rollo  Books,"  famous 
in  that  dim  nineteenth  century,  wrote 
also  the  familiar  "Lucy"  and  "Jonas  Books," 
and  another  series  less  well  known  but  in 
valuable  to  the  American  who  is  curious- 
minded  as  to  the  social  history  of  his  country. 
Marco  Paul's  Adventures  in  Pursuit  of 
Knowledge  (is  the  title  not  indicative  of  the 
pretty,  harmless  wit  of  those  innocent  days?) 
is  the  record  of  an  early  attempt  to  "see  Amer 
ica  first."  Marco  Paul,  after  showing  his  na 
tive  city  of  New  York  to  the  excellent  For 
rester,  at  once  his  cousin  and  his  tutor,  visited 
in  that  relative's  company,  and  in  a  hot  and 
praiseworthy  pursuit  of  knowledge,  Ver 
mont,  the  Springfield  Armory,  the  forests 
of  Maine,  Boston,  and  the  Erie  Canal! 
Agreeable  though  all  the  volumes  are,  it  is 
with  the  one  upon  the  capital  of  Massachu 
setts  that  we  are  here  concerned,  and  in  espe 
cial  with  the  chapter  describing  the  visit  of 
our  travelers  to  the  Bunker  Hill  Monument. 
"Who  fought  the  battle  on  Bunker  Hill?" 
Marco  Paul  asked  his  cousin  Forrester.  And 

1 


2  American   Towns  and  People 

the  author  of  the  Adventures,  who  was,  it  is  to 
be  noted,  a  Bostonian,  comments  in  this  aston 
ishing  way  upon  the  young  hero's  ignorance. 
"Marco  Paul,"  he  says,  "was  a  New  York  boy 
and  did  not  know  much  about  the  battle  of 
Bunker  Hill." 

In  1843  the  Revolution  was  not — one  would 
now  say — so  very  remote.  The  discovery  is 
therefore  the  more  significant  that  so  long  ago 
Boston  was  casting  at  New  York  the  same  re 
proach  of  being  "un-American"  over  which 
recent  writers  upon  our  civilization  have  so 
often  become  philosophical.  Even  after  more 
than  three-quarters  of  a  century  this  acidity 
of  tone  about  poor  Marco  Paul  seems,  at  the 
very  outset,  to  warn  off  any  New-Yorker  pre 
paring  to  comment  upon  Boston.  Perhaps 
the  only  apology  for  recklessness  is  reckless 
ness  itself.  But  it  can  at  least  be  hinted  that 
nowadays  few  New-Yorkers  are  New-York 
ers  ;  they  are  more  commonly  Ohioans. 

Since  the  Bostonian  attitude  toward  New 
York  has,  by  the  accident  of  Marco  Paul's 
faux  pas  upon  Bunker  Hill,  already  been  in 
troduced,  it  may  be  as  well  to  go  on,  and  to 
say  that  their  feeling  concerning  the  metro 
polis,  varying  in  quality  and  in  emotional 
force,  is  one  of  the  most  curious  and  distin 
guishing  marks  of  our  other  cities.  Philadel 
phia,  for  example,  ignores  New  York.  Bos- 


Why  Is  a  Bostonian?  3 

ton,  on  the  other  hand,  is  over-acutely 
conscious  of  it,  hates  it,  despises  it,  loves  its 
fleshpots  and  its  Great  White  Way,  and  is 
ashamed  of  itself  for  doing  so.  All  this,  be 
it  clearly  understood,  is  said  in  praise  rather 
than  dispraise  of  Boston.  But  the  facts  are 
as  they  are.  New  York  is  perpetually  upon 
Boston's  nerves.  To  a  foreign  school-boy 
studying  his  atlas,  Philadelphia  would  seem 
to  be  considerably  nearer  the  mouth  of  the 
Hudson  than  Boston;  spiritually,  if  one  may 
put  it  that  way,  the  New  England  capital  is 
far  closer  at  hand. 

Until  very  recently  it  was  possible  to  take 
a  train  from  Boston  to  New  York  at  a  later 
hour  than  you  could  enter  the  subway  and 
take  a  street-car  for  Cambridge — a  fact 
which  in  the  days  before  Harvard  became  a 
serious  scholarly  athletic  college  was  often 
taken  by  belated  and  cheerful  students  of  that 
institution  as  a  sign  direct  from  God.  The 
development  of  what  was  known  as  the  "brass- 
bed  train"  between  the  two  cities  was  evidence 
of  an  almost  exacerbated  anxiety  to  make  the 
night  transit  endurable  to  overwrought,  quiv 
ering  creatures  returning  to  the  shores  of 
Massachusetts  Bay.  New  York's  tango  roofs 
and  pleasure  palaces  are  the  constant  familiar 
haunt  of  Bostonians,  yet  it  is  never  certain  that 
the  visitors  are  quite  at  their  ease  there. 


4  American   Towns  and  People 

Even  for  the  larkish  trip  to  New  York  they 
bring  certain  grave  prejudices  and  scientific 
ideas  as  to  hygiene,  which  look  very  odd  when 
unpacked  in  Manhattan.  A  Bostonian  lady 
who  was  enthusiastic  over  New  York's  danc- 
ing-in-public  restaurants,  asserting  that  at 
home  it  was  difficult  regularly  to  secure  this 
excellent  health-exercise,  caused  considerable 
confusion  one  New-Year's  Eve  in  a  place  of 
entertainment  where,  for  that  evening,  only 
champagne  was  being  served  to  patrons,  by  in 
sisting  upon  having  "certified  milk,"  which 
was,  she  stoutly  maintained,  the  exact  thing 
which  could,  without  harming  her,  keep  her 
going  at  three  in  the  morning! 

It  is  no  bad  thing  to  pass  from  the  image 
of  the  blousy  beauty  of  Manhattan  to  one  of 
the  more  frugal,  nipped  loveliness  of  Boston. 
Of  course,  the  New-Yorker  might  well  feel 
terror  on  his  arrival  in  Boston,  especially  if 
it  is  after  nightfall,  in  that  strange  Back  Bay 
station  where  the  electric  lamps  seem  to  pro 
duce  light  without  shedding  it.  He  might 
reasonably  fear  that  now  justice  is  at  last  to 
be  meted  out  to  him.  But  when  the  first 
moment's  panic  is  over  he  cannot  but  feel,  as 
does  doubtless  the  repatriate  Bostonian,  that 
the  contrast  is,  for  the  time  being  at  least, 
agreeable  between  what  he  has  left  and  the 
cooler,  grayer,  more  distinguished  civiliza- 


Why  Is  a  Bostonian?  '$ 

tion  to  which  he  has  come.  More  distin 
guished,  in  the  accurate  sense  of  that  word, 
Boston  is.  While  the  national  metropolis  is 
at  once  vehement  and  vague,  the  New  Eng 
land  capital  is  more  measured,  more  clean- 
cut,  more  distinguished  in  the  sense  of  having 
somehow  so  concentrated  and  clarified  its  spe 
cial  flavor  that  no  one  can  for  a  moment  doubt 
that — for  better  or  worse — Boston  is  Boston. 
When  the  sharp  east  wind  has  cleared  away 
the  vapors  of  Broadway,  New  York  becomes 
less  an  actuality  than  a  nightmare,  and  the 
northern  town  and  its  inhabitants  are  per 
ceived  to  be  standing  very  firmly  on  their  own 
feet. 

These  northern  folk  are  passionately  Bos 
tonian — if  they  are  passionately  anything.  It 
is  pleasant  for  a  moment  to  think  of  the  lady 
living  in  Milton  (a  town  of  concentrated  Bos- 
tonianism)  who  said  of  her  son,  whose  career 
in  the  diplomatic  service  of  his  country  had 
kept  him  in  Paris  for  several  years,  that  her 
only  fear  was  that  he  should  "get  out  of  touch 
with  Milton"!  There  was  no  confusion  in 
her  mind  as  to  what  is  valuable  in  life.  In 
this  matter  of  values  and  belief  in  Boston  the 
Society  for  the  Preservation  of  New  England 
Antiquities  presented  itself  lately  to  great  ad 
vantage,  gallantly  going  to  the  courts  to  pre 
vent  the  alien — generally  French-Canadian— 


6  American   Towns  and  People 

from  changing  his  name  by  the  ordinary  legal 
processes  to  that  of  any  of  Boston's  old,  his 
toric  families.  There  is  a  something  here 
that  insists  on  being  like  the  Gilbert  and  Sul 
livan  operetta.  And  yet  there  is  also  some 
thing  magnificent — in  a  democracy — in  the 
fact  that  you  can  become  Smith,  but  never — 
s^all  we  say  Romans? 

The  intentions  of  this  article — though  hon 
orable — are  not  topographical,  yet  something 
must  be  said  of  the  look  of  Boston,  for  it  is 
indicative  of  the  town's  inner  quality — as  in 
deed  to  any  one  who  has  a  feeling  for  the  per 
sonality  of  places  is  always  the  look  of  streets 
and  squares  and  parks.  New  York  sprawls; 
Boston  really  composes  itself  around  Beacon 
Hill,  and  falls  away  from  the  lovely,  peace 
ful,  brick  quarter  which  surrounds  the  State 
House  to  the  business  district  and  the  foreign 
North  End  on  one  side,  and  on  the  other  to 
the  Back  Bay,  the  great  South  End,  the  huge, 
trailing  suburbs  that  lie  farther  out,  and  fin 
ally  the  New  England  country  of  which  it  is 
the  metropolis  and  the  commercial  and  spir 
itual  head.  Somehow  all  through  the  town 
one  gets  hints  of  the  great  tributary  province. 
There  is  a  little  old  shop  near  the  busy  center 
where  are  displayed  in  the  window  slippery- 
elm  and  licorice  sticks — does  the  sight  not 
bring  all  New  England's  rocky  fields  and 


Why  Is  a  Bostonian?  7 

white  villages  immediately  before  your  eyes? 
The  State  House  is  to  the  eye  as  to  the 
imagination  the  center  of  New  England,  and 
its  gilded  dome  rising  over  the  dark-green  of 
the  elms  on  the  Common  is  typical  of  the  un- 
exuberant,  distinguished  beauty  of  this  North 
ern  Athens.  There  is  probably  quite  as  much 
gold  upon  the  dome  as  would  be  necessary  to 
decorate  a  New  York  restaurant.  But  in  the 
former  case  there  is  no  vulgar  ostentation  in 
its  use.  There  is  not  even  the  kind  of  warm, 
barbaric  lavishness,  which  incrusts  the  Vene 
tian  St.  Mark's  with  the  precious  metal.  The 
Bostonian  State  House  seems  instead  to  pro 
claim  that  here  in  a  shrewd,  inclement  climate 
and  upon  an  arid,  stony  soil  New  England  in 
dustry  and  thrift  have  won  a  living  and  even 
wealth,  and  that  wrhen  the  occasion  reasonably 
and  sanely  demands  it  New  England  can  be 
lavish,  almost  spendthrift.  You  get  a  sense 
everywhere  in  Boston  that  they  spend  money 
upon  public  enterprises  like  state  houses, 
opera-houses,  art  museums,  and  so  forth  be 
cause  there  is  a  need  to  have  such  things  and 
the  money  can  be  found,  not  because  the 
money  is  there  and  there  is  a  need  to  find  some 
way  to  spend  it — the  latter  being  a  much  more 
characteristic  American  frame  of  mind. 
Reason  rather  than  emotion  guides  New  Eng 
land  expenditure,  and  the  result  is  a  cool  and 


8  American  Towns  and  People 

restrained  distinction  which  the  wanton  cities 
of  the  South  and  West  never  quite  attain. 

The  old  Boston  dwellings  upon  Beacon 
Hill  have  this  look  of  tempered  luxury  to  per 
fection.  But  what  is  more  remarkable  is  the 
sobriety  of  domestic  architecture  in  the  newer 
districts,  even  in  that  decorous  Common 
wealth  Avenue,  in  which  the  true  Bostonian 
so  fantastically  asks  the  stranger  to  detect  a 
note  of  the  vulgarity  of  the  nouveau  riche. 
The  Louis's  have  never  wrought  much  of 
their  French  mischief  in  the  Back  Bay.  A 
certain  indigenous  ugliness  of  architecture  is 
preferred,  solid  and  roomy,  suggesting  com 
fort  rather  than  slender,  gilded  elegance. 
There  is  not  much  foreign-lace  nonsense  at 
the  windows;  instead  sometimes  only  simple, 
colored  silk  curtains  drawn  back  to  admit  the 
sun  and  allow  its  due  hygienic  effect.  Where 
the  outlook  is  toward  the  south,  plants  flour 
ish  in  the  Bostonian  windows,  and  the  passer 
by  instinctively  feels  that  they  actually  grow 
there,  and  may  even  be  watered  by  the  ladies 
of  the  house  instead  of  being  merely  a  tem 
porary  installation  by  some  expensive  florist, 
to  be  lavishly  and  immediately  replaced  when 
neglect  has  withered  them. 

The  Bostonian  interior,  too,  has  something 
of  this  frugal  quality,  and  may  be  recognized 
even  in  houses  in  the  Middle  West  where  the 


fer.. 


In  Scollay  Square  the  old  tradition  is  less  in  evidence, 


Why  Is  a  Bostonian?  9 

influence  of  the  summer  upon  the  North  Shore 
has  chastened  the  exuberance  of  taste  natural 
in  those  remoter  regions.  There  is  something 
extremely  pleasant  in  these  sunny,  cleanly 
scoured,  airy,  rather  scantily  furnished  rooms, 
with  big  expanses  of  polished  floor  and  well- 
worn  furniture.  They  seem  a  little  old-fash 
ioned  now,  but  this  is  merely  a  proof  that  taste 
struck  Boston  in  something  like  the  Vo's  of 
the  last  century,  a  little  before  it  hit  our  other 
towns. 

There  is,  of  course,  a  comic  side  to  this 
frugality.  One  can  imagine  that  in  the  early 
esthetic  days  the  inexpensiveness  of  the  jar  of 
dried  cattails  was  not  without  its  appeal  to  the 
Bostonian  decorator.  No  Bostonian  thinks  of 
spending  his  income;  no  New-Yorker  thinks 
of  spending  merely  his  income:  this  is  an  ex 
aggeration  of  something  fundamentally  true. 
The  solid,  piled-up,  quiet  wealth  of  Massa 
chusetts  is  enormous — what  the  department- 
store  experts  call  the  "shopping  power"  of  the 
regions  within  a  forty-mile  circle  around  the 
State  House  dome  is  some  amazing  propor 
tion  of  the  purchasing  ability  of  the  whole 
country.  Yet  Boston  shops  have  never  the  air 
of  inviting  gay,  wayward  extravagance,  the 
highest-priced  ones  are  the  least  obtrusive, 
and  the  best  always  seem  as  if  they  could  be 
instantly  adapted  to  the  sale  of  that  tradi- 


IO          American   Towns  and  People 

tional  black  silk  of  our  grandmothers  which 
could  "stand  alone." 

Bostonian  spending  is  the  result  of  mature 
and  deliberate  thought.  It  is  rarely  vulgar, 
but  it  knows  nothing  of  the  spendthrift's  joie 
de  vivre.  People  in  New  York  may  dine  at 
the  Ritz  from  obscure  motives  of  economy,  a 
vague  feeling  that  a  holiday  for  the  servants 
at  home  may  make  them  more  efficient  at 
other  times.  In  Boston  they  eat  in  restaurants, 
one  somehow  feels,  only  after  fasting  and 
prayer.  The  name  given  at  once  to  the  latest 
smart  hotel,  "The  Costly-Pleasure,"  is  signifi 
cant.  There  is  even  something  a  little  grim 
about  the  phrase;  it  is  almost  as  if  the  cost 
liness  of  pleasure  repelled  instead  of  allured, 
as  it  does  in  less  serious  towns.  Young  men 
in  evening  dress  do  not  idly  stroll  forth  into 
the  Bostonian  streets  with  their  overcoats  care 
lessly  unbuttoned ;  it  would  give  a  false  idea 
that  a  white-waistcoated  Costly-Pleasure 
night-life  is  real  Bostonianism.  They  hurry 
into  motors  and  taxis  and  are  about  their  busi 
ness  of  dining  and  dancing  seriously,  almost 
half  apologetically.  There  is,  in  short,  very 
little  bead  on  native  Boston  pleasure;  it  does 
not  run  to  froth. 

The  job  of  being  very  young  and  very  gay 
and  very  foolish  is  left  to  Harvard  undergrade 
uates.  The  proximity  of  a  great  supply  of 


Why  Is  a  Bostonian?  n 

young  men  with  hearty  appetites  and  strong 
dancing  legs  has  made  Boston  fashion  depend 
ent  and  complaisant.  The  boys,  in  conse 
quence,  do  all  the  things  which  gay  young 
men  do  in  light  magazine  fiction.  They  go 
to  parties  with  a  self-confident  indifference  as 
to  whether  they  have  been  invited  or  not. 
And  there  is  a  pretty  story  of  some  lads  bring 
ing  suit-cases  from  Cambridge,  in  which  they 
packed  bottles  of  champagne,  thus  transferring 
supplies  to  the  groves  of  Academe  after  the 
ball.  It  is  no  idle  boast  of  the  enthusiastic  ad 
vocates  of  Harvard  education  that  youth  there 
is  more  prepared  to  deal  with  the  great  world 
than  are  the  students  of  a  country  college. 
The  crimson  thread  of  Harvard  is  woven  into 
the  very  fabric  of  Bostonian  existence;  yet 
though  it  is  perpetually  there,  it  always  seems 
exotic. 

The  Bostonian  opera — now  suspended — 
was  beautifully  Bostonian;  it  presented  in 
agreeable  clearness  the  indigenous  social  qual 
ity.  The  decoration  of  the  house  was  quiet 
gray  and  gold,  and  the  garb  of  the  audience 
had  on  the  whole  something  of  the  same  so 
briety.  To  this  effect  the  native  frugality 
doubtless  contributed;  on  opera  nights  the 
streets  leading  to  the  edifice  were  thronged 
with  intrepid  women  equipped  to  give  battle 
to  extravagance  for  music's  sake,  with  galoshes 


12          American  Towns  and  People 

and  woolen  scarfs — in  this  rude  Northern  cli 
mate  even  "fascinators"  must  be  woolen.  If 
an  Italian  lady  in  evening  dress  could  not  af 
ford  a  cab  to  the  opera,  she  would  quite  sim 
ply  stay  at  home — and  yet  we  prate  of  the  love 
of  music  nourished  in  those  sunny  climes! 
This  tribute  to  ladies  in  fascinators  is  not  to 
be  taken  as  meaning  that  there  were  not  more 
luxurious  women — and  plenty — in  the  stalls 
and  boxes — lovely,  carriage-borne  creatures, 
expensively  dressed  and  well  jeweled,  prob 
ably  with  the  best  old  Brazilian  stones;  the 
point  is  that  the  total  effect  of  the  Bostonian 
audience  was  what  it  rarely  is  in  opera-houses 
— subordinate  to  the  stage. 

The  opening  night  was  an  incredible  event. 
Banquet  parties  of  the  gayest  Bostonians  had 
gathered  to  dine  at  an  hour  when  food  would 
poison  the  fashionable  people  of  other  cities, 
and  the  crush  of  carriages  was  beyond  every 
thing  ever  known,  not  because  more  people 
were  going  to  the  opera  than  go  in  other  cities, 
but  because,  for  the  first  time  in  the  history 
of  opera,  every  one  wanted  to  arrive  on  time. 
The  intervals  of  the  performance  were  de 
voted  to  a  general  promenade,  in  which  many 
box-holders  joined.  Indeed,  the  attention 
paid  to  the  occupants  of  boxes  by  the  general 
audience  was  barely  sufficient  to  induce  fe 
male  loveliness  to  display  its  charms  in  the 


Why  Is  a  Bostonian?  13 

traditional  entr'acte  manner — the  ladies,  if  the 
truth  be  told,  excited  about  the  same  amount 
of  admiration  as  did  the  silver-gilt  soda-water 
fountain  which  had  been  installed  in  the  foyer. 
Here,  it  seemed  to  the  irreverent  outsider,  the 
last  word  had  been  said.  To  have  linked 
opera  with  the  nut-sundae  is  to  have,  once  for 
all,  domesticated  the  gay,  wayward  institu 
tion  and  made  it  Boston's  harmless,  admirable 
own. 

Light-minded  comment,  however,  never 
discloses  more  than  one  side  of  a  medal.  The 
Bostonian  opera  showed,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
an  admirable  and  sane  sense  of  proportion. 
It  was  not  the  London,  the  Paris,  or  the  New 
York  opera.  Why,  pray,  should  it  have  been? 
It  was  opera  of  exactly  the  size  and  sumptu- 
ousness  which  it  was  likely  that  a  town  of 
Boston's  extent  and  wealth  could  afford.  It 
seemed  something  which  could  reasonably 
hope  to  exist,  not  the  product  of  a  spasmodic, 
hysterical  effort  such  as  occasionally  brings 
fabulously  paid  singers  to  some  of  our  smaller 
cities  for  a  feverish  May  Festival  or  special 
operatic  week.  It  was  not  a  provincial  enter 
prise,  because  it  was  not  aping  any  metropolis. 
Tt  was  the  opera  of  the  capital  of  New  Eng 
land,  and  it  stood  firmly,  like  many  other 
neighboring  institutions,  upon  its  own  sturdy, 
galoshed,  Bostonian  feet.  It  may,  of  course, 


14          American   Towns  and  People 

always  be  open  to  question  whether  operatic 
art  is  not  a  too  essentially  artificial  and  emo 
tional  blend  ever  to  please  the  Bostonian  pub 
lic  as  does  the  classically  severe  fare  offered  in 
Symphony  Hall.  But  the  Huntington  Avenue 
opera  was  meant  to  stand  or  fall  by  the  genu 
ine  music-loving  support  of  its  public.  Even 
if  the  operatic  dose  was  bitter,  it  was  to  be 
disguised  by  no  "diamond  horseshoe,"  by  no 
soft  Ionian  ways.  And  wrho  shall  say  that, 
though  now  suspended,  the  Boston  opera  has 
not  had  its  nation-wide  effect?  Has  not  its 
gifted  scene-painter  already  been  chosen  by 
New  York  to  do  the  decorations  for  its  lead 
ing  summer  "girl-show,"  and  does  he  not  thus 
continue  to  enliven  Boston? 

Culture  has  always  seemed  to  the  outsider  a 
little  rigorous  in  Boston.  But  as  one  looks 
over  the  whole  field  of  American  life  one  is 
inclined  to  say  that  desperate  situations  de 
mand  desperate  remedies,  and  that  to  have 
caught  culture  in  any  trap,  even  just  to  have 
got  it  fighting  in  a  corner,  is  an  achievement. 

This  is  not  altogether  a  question  of  art, 
though  art  is  no  doubt  one  of  the  town's  chief 
preoccupations.  Still  less  is  it  a  question  of 
producing  art.  It  is  no  great  reproach  to  Bos 
ton  that  it  is  nowadays  more  a  center  of  appre 
ciation  than  creation.  There  is  here  no  ques 
tion  of  where  the  divine  afflatus  blows  most 


Why  Is  a  Bostonian?  15 

fiercely.  New  York  is  the  mart,  and  that  is 
about  all  there  is  to  be  said  upon  an  already 
threadbare  subject. 

Culture  has,  perhaps,  more  to  do  with  edu 
cation  than  with  art.  We  study  enough  in 
America — that  is,  we  go  to  schools  and  col 
leges — but  somehow,  it  may  as  well  be  ad 
mitted  frankly,  we  do  not  succeed  in  weaving 
our  education  into  the  very  fabric  of  our  daily 
social  intercourse;  we  are  not  cultivated  in 
the  unobtrusive,  easy  way  of  the  best  English 
men  and  Frenchmen.  Now  the  newspaper 
humorists'  best  jokes  hinge  upon  the  alleged 
universality  of  Boston  culture.  And  though 
the  alien  visitor  may  never  find  the  infant  who 
spouts  Greek  while  brandishing  his  rattle,  he 
will  in  simple  justice  admit  that  education  has 
gone  both  far  and  deep  in  Boston,  that  slang 
is  not  the  only  dialect  spoken,  and  that  even 
among  shop-girls  and  elevator-boys  some 
traces  of  our  original  national  speech  are  still 
to  be  detected. 

Here,  parenthetically,  it  may  be  said  that 
what  is  meant  by  Bostonians  speaking  English 
is  the  words  themselves  rather  than  the  in 
tonation  and  pronunciation  with  which  they 
are  uttered.  The  "Boston  accent"  is  of  course 
famous  and  cannot  but  fail  to  give  the  keen 
est  pleasure  to  even  a  child  traveling  thither. 
The  point  to  be  made  here  is  that  it  does  not, 


16          American  Towns  and  People 

as  the  Bostonians  appear  to  think,  approxi 
mate  to  the  English  accent  of  England  any 
more  than  any  other  of  our  national  accents. 
The  total  elision  of  the  R  and  the  amazing 
broad,  flat  A— as  in  "Park  Street"  and  "Har 
vard  College" — give  to  Bostonian  speech  a 
magnificently  indigenous  tang,  hint  at  juniper 
and  spruce  forests  and  rocky  fields  and  pump 
kins  and  Thanksgiving  and  pie;  make  you 
feel  again  how  triumphantly  New  England  is 
new,  and  not  old,  English.  But  its  vocabulary 
is,  on  the  whole,  the  best  chosen  of  all  the 
American  dialects. 

It  is  somewhat  difficult  to  find  in  ordinary 
Bostonian  speech  the  ten-  and  twelve-syllabled 
words  of  which  it  is  popularly  supposed  to  be 
exclusively  composed.  But  the  joke  is  so  old 
that  there  must  be  something  in  it.  As  far 
back  as  Brook  Farm  it  was  alleged  that  they 
said,  "Cut  the  pie  from  the  center  to  the  pe 
riphery,"  and  asked,  "Is  the  butter  within  your 
sphere  of  influence?"  But  this  was  humor, 
as  New  England  as  a  wintergreen  lozenge.  It 
was  a  by-product  of  an  unashamed  passion 
for  education  which  distinguished  American 
antebellum  days.  Even  in  the  Middle  West, 
when  James  Garfield,  later  to  be  President, 
with  his  friends  in  the  little  fresh-water  col 
lege  of  Hiram,  indulged  in  "stilting,"  as  they 
termed  this  humorous  riding  of  the  high- 


Why  Is  a  Bostonian?  17 

horses  of  the  language,  they  were  in  the  Bos 
tonian  tradition.  "Stilting"  has  perhaps  dis 
appeared.  But  there  are  here  and  there  in 
dications  of  the  survival  of  the  English  of  a 
robuster  period.  The  old  lady  who  said  that 
she  didn't,  after  all,  know  that  Bostonians  were 
so  "thundering  pious,"  produced  with  the 
phrase  all  the  effect  of  an  Elizabethan  oath. 
She  made  you  feel  that  Bostonian  culture  was 
no  mere  thin  affair  of  yesterday. 

It  should  be  acknowledged  handsomely 
that  there  is  a  certain  amenity  of  tone  in  the 
town  which  comes  not  so  much  from  exuber 
ant  good  nature  as  from  a  reasoned  belief  in 
life's  higher  interests.  The  policeman  who  in 
Commonwealth  Avenue  used  to  stop  prome 
nading  strangers  and  urge  them  to  turn  and 
admire  the  sunset  was  extending  the  city's  hos 
pitality  no  less  to  nature's  beauty  than  to  the 
visitors.  He  was  notably  Bostonian  in  that 
he  was  ashamed  neither  of  the  sunset  nor  of 
his  belief  that  pleasure  was  to  be  derived  from 
its  contemplation.  His  culture  was  genuinely 
a  part  of  his  existence,  of  his  everyday  life. 
And  culture  is  unquestionably  a  more  integral 
part  of  Boston's  normal  existence  than  of  our 
other  cities'  lives.  Only  in  Boston,  to  imagine 
a  concrete  and  pleasing  example,  could  a  lady, 
if  she  were  so  inclined,  be  distinguished  by  a 
love  for  extreme  decolletage  and  for  early 


1 8          American  Towns  and  People 

Buddhistic  philosophy.  There  is,  in  Boston, 
nothing  essentially  inharmonious  in  such  a 
combination. 

In  any  case,  variations  from  a  standard  type 
are  not  so  severely  penalized  in  Boston  as  in 
other  parts  of  our  country.  Eccentricity  is 
almost  encouraged;  to  take  but  one  example, 
old  age  is  openly,  almost  brazenly,  permitted. 
Just  how  they  kill  the  old  off  in  New  York 
is  not  known,  but  they  get  rid  of  them  some 
how.  Boston,  on  the  contrary,  has  famous  old 
people,  especially  old  ladies,  and  the  commu 
nity's  pride  in  them  is  not  merely  that  they 
have  been  able  so  long  to  withstand  the  Bos 
ton  climate.  These  veterans  do  not  eat  their 
evening  meal  up-stairs  on  a  tray;  instead,  their 
visit  to  a  dinner-table  honors  and  enlivens  the 
board.  There  is  something  extraordinarily 
exciting  in  meeting  the  lady  whose  witticisms 
were  famous  when  you  were  almost  a  child 
and  finding  her  still  tossing  them  off  so  vigor 
ously  and  gayly  that  you  can  with  a  clear  con 
science  encourage  your  own  children  to  grow 
up  with  the  promise  that  when  they  are  old 
enough  to  dine  out  they,  too,  shall  be  privi 
leged  to  go  to  Boston  and  hear  really  good 
talk. 

The  New  England  capital  cherishes  affec 
tionately  links  with  the  past.  There  was  un 
til  lately  for  some  favored  people  the  possi- 


Why  Is  a  Bostonian?  19 

bility  of  going  to  tea  in  a  faded,  old-fashioned 
Boston  drawing-room,  from  the  windows  of 
which  you  saw  the  sunset  across  the  Charles 
River  basin,  and  hearing  wise,  graceful,  ten 
der  talk  that  made  the  literary  past  of  Eng 
land  and  America  for  almost  three-quarters 
of  a  century  seem  like  the  pleasant  gossip  of 
to-day.  The  delight  of  such  moments  in  the 
fading  light  was  poignant — the  tears  would 
come  into  one's  eyes  at  the  realization  that  it 
was  all  too  good  to  be  true  and  also  too  good 
to  last. 

The  respect  for  the  person  or  the  thing 
which  has  become  "an  institution"  is  always 
to  be  noted  with  interest  in  our  American  life. 
And  for  an  evening  newspaper — a  vulgar  and 
fly-blown  thing  elsewhere — to  have  a  half-sa 
cred  character  is  possible  only  in  Boston.  The 
publication  in  question  is  not  thought  of  as  a 
mere  private  enterprise;  it  is  integrally  a  part 
of  the  whole  community's  life,  its  policy  and 
its  grammar  are  both  constant  matters  for  the 
searchings  of  the  New  England  conscience. 
It  is  even  solemnly  asserted — by  those  who 
should  know — that  more  Bostonians  die  on 
Friday  than  on  any  other  day  because  they 
thus  make  sure  of  being  in  the  special  Satur 
day  night  obituary  notices!  To  pay,  even  in 
the  date  of  death,  such  a  tribute  to  the  Bos 
tonian  tradition  is  magnificent. 


2O          American  Towns  and  People 

But  if  one  is  to  speak  of  institutions,  there 
is  of  course  Harvard  College,  without  which 
it  is  impossible  to  imagine  Boston  and  Bos 
ton  culture.  Changes  in  Cambridge  are 
changes  in  Boston.  For  a  ten  or  twenty  year 
period  there  has  been  a  determined  and  con 
scientious  attempt  across  the  Charles  to  break 
down  the  old  barriers  and  traditions  which 
kept  Harvard  from  being  democratic  and  effi 
cient  in  the  modern  way.  What  has  been  ac 
complished  in  Cambridge  is  for  the  purposes 
of  this  article  less  important  than  what  has 
been  wrought  in  Boston.  Undergraduates 
may  take  innovation  lightly,  but  in  the  fast 
nesses  of  clubs  upon  Beacon  Hill  irate  old  gen 
tlemen  declare  that  Harvard  is  now  nothing 
but  a  "slap-shoulder  college,"  and  younger 
philosophers  of  a  more  suavely  cynical  turn 
of  mind  deplore  the  out-Yaleing  of  Yale,  and 
the  rough,  boyish  virility,  wholly  unconnected 
with  education,  which,  they  maintain,  now 
distinguishes  Cambridge  rather  than  New 
Haven.  They  tell  you  that  "college  spirit," 
with  all  its  attendant  vulgarities  of  tone,  is 
rampant  where  the  college  elms  once  stood, 
and  there  are  no  longer  any  disloyal  sons  of 
Harvard.  This  is  the  pleasant,  crabbed,  char 
acteristic  way  in  which  Boston  tells  you  that, 
after  all,  it  is  moving  with  the  times,  and  that 
if  a  big,  regenerative  movement  as  some  be- 


Why  Is  a  Bostonian?  21 

lieve  is  sweeping  over  the  country,  it  will  have 
Harvard  men  in  the  very  first  battle-line.  Bos 
ton  may  bewail  changes  in  the  nation,  but  it 
knows  they  cannot  happen  without  changes  in 
Harvard.  Centuries  of  history  prove  it. 

These  centuries  of  history  are  singularly 
alive  in  Boston.  The  reference  is  not  to  Fan- 
euil  Hall  or  the  Old  South  Church  or  any 
of  the  historic  spots  about  which  our  modern 
Marco  Pauls  from  Michigan  and  Oregon 
know  so  much.  What  is  meant  is  the  amaz 
ing  sense  of  a  continuous  social  connection 
back  to  the  very  English  roots  of  the  New 
England  tree. 

An  unwise  stranger,  sitting  at  ease  in  a  Bos 
tonian  club  one  day,  ventured  the  observation, 
not  deeply  original  or  stimulating,  that  Bos 
ton  was  remarkable  for  the  way  in  which  the 
old  Bostonian  families  had  kept  the  money 
and  the  position  and  were  still,  as  it  were,  in 
the  saddle.  The  Bostonians  looked  at  one  an 
other.  They  murmured  a  negative,  and  the 
faintest  trace  of  embarrassment  seemed  to 
creep  over  the  group.  The  confused  stranger 
was  so  sure  that  his  remark,  if  banal,  was  true 
that  he  thought  they  had  not  understood.  He 
carefully  explained  again.  The  negative  was 
now  sharper  and  the  embarrassment  deeper. 

"I  don't  think  you  quite  understand—  '  be 
gan  one  of  the  Bostonians;  and  it  is  possible 


22          American  Towns  and  People 

that  the  miserable  stranger  might  have  tried 
to  explain  still  again  had  not  his  friend  gone 
on: 

"You  see,  there  are  almost  no  Bostonians 
living  here;" — he  paused  for  an  instant — "al 
most  all  the  Bostonian  families  went  back 
home  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution.  The  in 
habitants  here  now,  with  the  exception  of  per 
haps  four  families,  are  all  Salem  people!" 

There  is  no  way  of  commenting  upon  such 
an  episode ;  there  it  is,  in  sheer  Bostonian  beau 
ty,  for  such  as  are  worthy  of  seeing  its  Bos- 
tonianism.  The  tormented  un-Bostonian  mind 
will  possibly  seek  refuge  in  the  thought  of  the 
club  itself.  (One  does  not  say  clubs,  although 
it  is  just  possible  to  maintain  that  there  are 
two  in  Boston.)  Its  grave,  suave  distinction 
can  only  be  savored  by  many  visits  and  by 
quiet,  meditative  hours.  But  once  you  have 
felt  its  charm  you  will  henceforth  find  the  or 
dinary  American  organization  more  like  a 
hotel  or  a  railway  station  than  like  a  club.  To 
sign  no  checks,  but  instead  to  receive  an  un 
obtrusive  and  unitemized  bill  at  the  end  of 
the  month,  is  at  once  to  gain  the  impression 
that  you  are  being  notably  treated  like  a  gen 
tleman.  The  impression  is  deepened  by  gen 
uine  blue  Canton  ware,  by  waiters  of  a  dig 
nified  and  ancient  kindliness  which  has  else 
where  disappeared  from  American  life,  and 


A  street'corner  seeker  after  truth. 


Why  Is  a  Bostonian?  23 

by  food  excellent  in  that  strange,  tempered 
New  England  way — oysters  from  the  club's 
own  planted  waters,  and  peppers  and  pepper 
sauces  dated  and  labeled  like  vintage  wines. 

The  right  to  belong  to  such  a  club  is,  as  it 
were,  beyond  the  power  of  the  mere  individual 
to  acquire — it  is  something  with  or  without 
which  he  is  born.  The  club,  indeed,  has  been 
described  as  an  institution  for  the  Congeni- 
tally  Eminent."  But  within  its  doors  you 
catch  furtive  hints  of  an  inaccessible  inner 
eminence — caused  possibly  by  Bostonian  in 
stead  of  Salem  descent — which  makes  even  its 
exclusiveness  seem  common.  There  is  a  fabu 
lous  story  of  an  eighth-degree  Bostonian  who 
referred  lightly  to  his  rare  visits  to  this  holy 
of  club  holies,  of  which  he  was,  as  it  were 
automatically,  a  member,  and  said  that  it  was 
"at  times  a  pleasure  to  be  franchement  ca 
naille."  In  this  wind-swept  Northern  clime 
the  phrase  in  the  French  language  somehow 
seems  to  accentuate  the  odd,  bitter,  cultivated 
venom  of  a  description  of  the  greatest  Bos 
tonian  exclusiveness  as  "frankly  of  the  gut 
ter."  Let  Ohio  and  Oklahoma  pause  and 
think  before  they  too  quickly  describe  our 
American  civilization  as  twentieth-century 
democracy. 

Bostonian  democracy  is  not  the  spontane 
ous  product  of  naturally  genial'temperaments; 


24          American  Towns  and  People 

it  is  rather  a  thing  extorted  from  oneself  by 
will  and  fierce  conviction.  But  will,  belief, 
and  a  conscience  can  make  the  Northern  city 
burst  into  flames.  In  Boston  least  of  any 
where  in  the  North  does  the  passion  for  human 
freedom  which  brought  on  our  own  Civil  War 
seem  a  dead  or  forgotten  thing.  And  even 
now  the  black  brother — though  modern 
thought  judges  him  to  be  not  quite  a  brother 
in  the  old  sense — can  still  count  on  a  helping 
hand  and  some  belief  in  his  future.  It  is  well 
for  the  visitor  to  Boston  to  sit  for  a  peaceful 
half-hour  under  the  elms  of  the  Common  and 
think  of  New  England's  part  in  the  national 
life.  Geographically  and  spiritually  New 
England  is  a  little  apart.  It  is  a  tight,  small 
province,  and  it  is  a  long  way  from  there  to 
Washington  in  ordinary  times.  It  is  in  the 
crises  that  Boston  becomes  most  intensely 
American;  then  you  realize  how  far-flung  is 
the  battle-line  of  the  New  England  conscience. 
One  never  quite  forgets  in  Boston  the  great 
moments  in  our  history  when  the  country  has 
kindled  at  New  England's  burning  heart. 

Modern  workers,  who  believe  that  charity 
and  good  deeds  begin  at  home,  sometimes 
scoff  at  the  Bostonian  "long-distance  philan 
thropy."  And  they  cite  you  the  story  of  the 
lady  found  wildly  weeping  because  she  had 
just  heard  how  cruel  they  were  to  cats  in  Per- 


Why  Is  a  Bostonlan?  25 

sia  in  the  thirteenth  century!  She  is  indeed  a 
shade  fantastical,  poor  lady;  but  in  the  mo 
notonous  dead  levels  of  American  life  we  can 
be  grateful  to  Boston  for  her. 

Indeed,  is  not  gratitude,  after  all,  the  chief 
feeling  one  has  for  Boston?  Nipped  and  sour 
though  the  fruit  sometimes  may  be  of  the  tree 
which  grows  upon  her  thin  soil  in  her  bitter 
east  wind,  does  not  every  descendant  of  the 
old  American  stock,  and  every  one  who  has 
in  his  Americanization  made  the  traditions  of 
that  stock  his  own,  know  that  the  core  of  that 
fruit  is  sound,  and  the  cider  that  might  be 
pressed  from  it  the  best  of  our  native  wines, 
if  one  may  put  it  that  way?  The  packed 
trains  that  carry  Thanksgiving  travelers  to 
Boston  seem  somehow  symbolic.  The  statis 
tics  are  not  at  hand — when  are  statistics  ever 
at  hand  when  they  are  needed? — but  it  must 
be  that  these  trains  are  more  heavily 
freighted  than  those  that  go  to  any  other  of 
our  great  American  cities.  Whether  we  are 
from  New  England  or  not,  Boston  is  for  many 
of  us,  in  a  deeper  sense,  our  "home  town." 


Who  Is  a  Philadelphia!!? 

A  STRANGER  recently  in  Philadelphia 
-^"*-  on  business  bethought  himself,  in  his 
friendless  state,  of  a  one-time  casual  acquaint 
ance  who  had  given  as  his  address  a  Philadel 
phia  club.  From  his  hotel  the  visitor  tele 
phoned  the  club  and  asked  if  he  might  speak 
with  Mr.  John  Doe.  The  telephone-clerk 
asked  the  inquirer's  name,  and  after  a  decent 
interval  replied  that  Mr.  Doe  was  not  in  the 
club.  The  inquiry  was  then  made  whether 
Mr.  Doe  was  in  town  and  likely  to  be  reached 
by  a  note  sent  to  the  club.  The  clerk  politely 
regretted  that  he  was  not  allowed  to  give  any 
such  information  concerning  a  member  of  the 
club.  The  visitor  protested,  and  was  finally 
allowed  to  speak  to  the  secretary's  office.  He 
gave  his  name  again  and,  in  answer  to  what 
seemed  an  odd  query,  that  of  his  hotel.  He 
explained  that  the  shortness  of  his  stay  in 
Philadelphia  was  the  reason  of  his  anxiety  to 
know  whether  he  was  likely  to  get  hold  of 
Mr.  Doe  during  it  or  not.  The  secretary  also 
politely  regretted  his  inability  so  to  violate 
the  privacy  of  any  member's  life.  The  visitor, 

27 


28          American  Towns  and  People 

now  vaguely  feeling  that  he  was  being  treated 
like  a  dun  or  a  detective,  protested  in  slight 
exasperation  that  his  designs  upon  Mr.  Doe 
were  honorable  and  purely  social — that  in 
deed  he  felt  so  sure  of  Mr.  Doe's  desire  to 
welcome  him  to  Philadelphia  as  to  be  inclined 
to  insist  upon  some  disclosure  of  even  a  club- 
member's  whereabouts.     The  secretary  now 
grew  the  least  bit  weaker,  moved  eithef  by  an 
inner  kindliness  or  by  some  note  of  social  au 
thority  in  the  visitor's  voice,  and  at  last  grudg 
ingly  said  that  although  the  rules  of  the  club 
were  perfectly  clear  upon  the  point,  he  would 
as  a  courtesy  consult  one  or  two  members  of 
the  board  of  governors  who  happened  at  that 
moment  to  be  in  the  smoking-room.     There 
was  again  a  decent  if  tedious  interval,  and  the 
secretary's  voice  was  once  more  heard.     He 
reiterated  that  it  was  contrary  to  the  rules  of 
the  club  to  give  information  as  to  the  where 
abouts  of  any  member,  but  that  it  had  been 
decided  that,  in  this  special  case,  an  exception 
might  be  made.     He  was  pleased  to  inform 
the  visitor  that  Mr.  John  Doe  had  died  in 
December  of  the  preceding  year! 

The  first  comment  to  be  made  upon  this  au 
thentic  anecdote  is  that,  in  spite  of  the  secre 
tary's  courteous  pretense,  the  rules  of  the  club 
were  not  violated  by  the  disclosure  of  a  mem 
ber's  whereabouts,  since  the  inquirer  after  Mr. 


Who  Is  a  Philadelphian?  29 

John  Doe  was  still  left,  theologically  speak 
ing,  with  a  choice  between  two  possible  ad 
dresses.  The  second  observation,  perhaps 
more  profoundly  significant,  is  that  death 
scarcely  increases  the  inaccessibility  of  a  well 
born  Philadelphian. 

The  tradition  of  exclusiveness  is  one  of  the 
most  striking  features  of  the  Philadelphian 
picture.  And  if  this  exclusiveness,  which 
keeps  the  well-born  safely  apart  from  the  not- 
well-born,  makes  it  difficult  for  even  a  Phila 
delphian  to  know  Philadelphia,  how  much 
more  nearly  impossible  does  it  render  such  a 
task  for  the  un-Philadelphian,  who  must  de 
pend  upon  occasional  visits  and  casual  gossip 
for  his  information.  However  genial  Phila 
delphian  hospitality  may  have  been,  the 
stranger  will  find  that  whatever  "set"  he  may 
be  in,  it  is,  as  it  were,  the  wrong  set  for  any 
general  survey  of  the  great  town.  The  alien 
must  frankly  preface  his  impressions  of  Phila 
delphia  and  its  people  with  a  confession  of 
foredoomed  ignorance  of  his  subject. 

Long  our  second  largest  city,  and  even  now 
our  third,  Philadelphia  is  nevertheless,  in  the 
strangest  fashion,  for  most  Americans  a  terra 
incognita.  It  is  conveniently  situated,  and  yet, 
almost  symbolically,  the  through  trains  run 
round  it  and  not  into  it.  It  makes  no  effort  to 
attract  the  stranger.  It  advertises  no  historic 


30          American   Towns  and  People 

attractions,  it  sets  no  Broadway  ablaze,  it  beats 
no  tom-toms.  Of  all  our  American  towns  it 
is  the  most  self-contained.  It  has  almost  none 
of  our  traditional  eagerness  for  and  sensitive 
ness  to  criticism.  There  is  in  it  nothing  of 
the  hurrah-boys'  braggadocio  which  so  often 
marks  our  American  "civic  spirit."  Philadel 
phia  does  not  assert  that  it  is  in  any  way  an 
admirable  town;  it  merely  feels  that  Philadel 
phia  exists,  always  has  existed,  and  always  will 
exist,  and  that  in  a  confused,  tumultuous,  and 
vulgar  world  this  is  the  one  uncontrovertible 
fact,  the  one  solid  rock  where  there  is  a  sure 
foothold. 

The  true  Philadelphian  neither  admires  nor 
dislikes  New  York;  he  simply  does  not  know 
that  New  York  exists.  The  great  lady  who 
managed  with  difficulty  to  remember  the 
metropolis  as  "the  place  where  one  goes  to  take 
the  steamer  for  Europe"  was  expressing  with 
a  conscious,  satirical  exaggeration  the  actual 
Philadelphian  feeling.  And  a  pretty,  moroc 
co-bound  set  of  address-books,  purchased 
lately  at  the  best  Philadelphia  stationer's, 
gives  a  charming  concreteness  to  this  same 
point  of  view;  the  three  little  volumes  are 
labeled  "Philadelphia,"  "London,"  and 
"Paris" — this  is  the  world  as  Philadelphia 
sees  it! 

Though  the  social  recognition  thus  grace- 


Who  Is  a  Phlladelphian?  31 

fully  extended  to  .London  and  Paris  is  denied 
to  Boston  and  New  York,  it  might  possibly 
be  granted  to  the  ancient  aristocracy  of  the 
South.  You  feel  instinctively  that  lovely, 
proud,  faded  Carolinian  Charleston  is  per 
haps  the  only  American  town  with  which 
Philadelphia  would  feel  at  ease.  Her  St.  Ce 
cilia  Ball  might  rank  with  the  Philadelphia 
Assemblies  of  an  earlier,  happier  day,  before 
Pittsburg  and  North  Broad  Street  had  fought 
their  way  into  the  once  sacred  lists.  And  it 
is  pleasant  upon  investigation  to  discover  cor 
roborative  traces  of  an  agreeable  earlier  con 
nection.  The  Philadelphia  Club  is  domiciled 
in  the  stately  old  mansion  which  a  rich 
Charlestonian  built  that  he  might  pass  the 
winter  seasons  in  the  Northern  city,  and  the 
famous  Madeira  which  bears  his  name  is  of 
fered  you  in  the  houses  where  the  Philadel- 
phian  tradition  still  beautifully  lingers.  You 
have  only  to  try  vainly  to  imagine  this  gentle 
man  of  the  old  regime  settling  upon  the  Bos- 
tonian  Beacon  Hill  to  realize  how  far  toward 
the  South  the  Pennsylvanian  metropolis  lies. 

Indeed,  the  Southern  note  in  Philadelphia 
is  unmistakable.  It  is  to  be  found  in  the  spa 
cious  look  of  the  old  houses,  and  in  a  certain 
lavishness  of  architectural  design  in  the  pub 
lic  edifices  of  Colonial  days.  Independence 
Hall  is  sumptuous;  you  have  only  to  compare 


32          American   Towns  and  People 

it  with  Boston's  Old  State  House  and  its  fru 
gal,  chastened  beauty  to  realize  that  Philadel 
phia  is  by  comparison  a  rich,  care-free  city 
upon  a  fat  Southern  soil.  This  softer  note  is 
to  be  found,  too,  in  the  gay  chatter  of  the 
Philadelphian  ladies,  and  in  the  pleasant  pres 
ence  of  a  well-mannered  black  population, 
and  a  generous,  fat  cuisine.  The  local  darky 
has  the  look  of  having  been  established  for 
generations  by  the  Schuylkill,  and  of  having 
devoted  a  great  deal  of  that  time  to  the  prepa 
ration  of  terrapin  and  the  decanting  of  vintage 
wines.  He  concerns  himself  naturally  with 
food.  In  the  eighteen-forties,  when  dashing 
resorts  known  as  "oyster-cellars"  were  intro 
duced,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  proprietors 
were  blacks.  And  even  now  the  caterer  who 
has,  as  it  were,  the  inherited  right  to  direct 
the  entertainments  of  the  real  Philadelphians 
is  an  ancient,  white-haired  gentleman  of  color. 
Food  is  always  the  fashion  in  Philadelphia. 
The  Philadelphian  air  is  everywhere  redolent 
of  good  living;  even  the  stranger  arriving  at 
the  railway  station  instinctively  thinks  of  the 
nearest  good  restaurant  and  the  next  meal.  It 
is  true  that  Benjamin  Franklin,  who  is  almost 
tutelary  in  Philadelphia,  proudly  said,  "My 
friends,  any  one  who  can  subsist  upon  saw 
dust  pudding  and  water,  as  I  can,  needs  no 
man's  patronage,"  and  it  is  possible  that  the 


Who  Is  a  Philadelphian?  33 

philosophical  gentlemen  who  still  meet  in  his 
quaint  old  red-brick  house,  far  down-town, 
may  be  nourished  by  some  such  sparse  diet, 
as  dry  as  their  discussions.  But,  in  spite  of 
Dr.  Franklin,  nowhere  else  in  the  country  is 
good  eating  so  ancient  and  stately  a  tradition. 
Nowadays,  of  course,  all  our  grill-roomed 
towns  struggle  for  a  culinary  standing,  but  it 
is  well  to  remember  darker  national  days;  a 
Philadelphian  writer  in  the  early  part  of  the 
last  century  tells  of  barbarous  regions  of 
America  where  a  favorite  dish  was  sausage 
stewed  in  chocolate!  Against  such  gastro 
nomic  abominations  Philadelphia  has  through 
the  years  stood  firm.  To-day  the  proudest 
hostesses  of  America  have  their  terrapin 
brought  from  Philadelphia.  Even  the  me 
tropolis,  greedy  and  luxurious  at  table,  speaks 
with  bated  breath  of  the  feasts  of  Lucullus 
spread  by  the  Delaware;  it  is  left  for  Balti 
more,  sitting  in  the  profusion  of  tribute  which 
her  great  bay  of  Chesapeake  pours  upon 
her,  alone  to  dispute  culinary  preeminence. 
Tradesmen  throughout  the  country  recom 
mend  their  establishments  as  "Philadelphia 
Markets,"  while  "Philadelphia  Chickens" 
and  "Philadelphia  Ice  Cream"  are  terms 
used  as  a  guarantee  of  excellence  and  richness. 
Marketing  is  a  serious  affair  where  eating  is 
serious;  it  is  not  so  long  ago  that  the  most  dig- 


34          American  Towns  and  People 

nified  Philadelphia!!  gentlemen,  top-hatted 
heads  of  households,  themselves  accompanied 
the  market-basket  on  its  morning  round. 

With  the  alarming  increase  of  non-alcohol 
ism  in  the  country,  it  has  of  course  become 
possible  nowadays  to  speak  in  praise  of  a  rich, 
groaning,  and  teetotal  table.  But  the  Phila 
delphia  epicure  has  not  yet  moved  the  whole 
distance  with  the  times.  The  bouquet  of  Ma 
deira  still  lingers  faintly  around  the  local  ma 
hogany  tree.  At  the  "English  Rooms"  in  Fun- 
chal — as  the  club  there  is  quaintly  called — it 
was  until  1918  a  matter  of  serious  discussion 
whether  the  taste  for  the  island's  wine  would 
ever  revive  in  Philadelphia  or  was  slowly 
dying.  Almost  anywhere  else  in  the  world 
such  talk  would  have  seemed  like  a  labored 
reconstruction  of  the  eighteenth  century;  even 
in  Philadelphia  itself  the  courteous  ceremo 
nials  of  Madeira-drinking  have  always  some 
thing  of  autumn's  loveliness  about  them ;  you 
feel  that  such  customs  must  with  the  years 
pass — if,  indeed,  anything  can  quite  pass  in 
Philadelphia. 

There  has  been  no  Madeira  since  1861,  so 
the  pink-faced,  white-haired  gentlemen  of  the 
old  school  tell  you;  and  since  you  cannot  lay 
down  vintages  and  thus  continue  your  cellar, 
it  is  small  wonder  that  a  pretty  taste  in  wine 
is  becoming  rarer.  But  here  and  there  in  the 


An  early  morning  rite. 


Who  Is  a  Philadelphlan?  35 

old  houses  famous  old  wines,  with  labels  writ 
ten  in  a  cramped,  old-fashioned  hand  hung 
upon  the  bottles,  are  still  put  upon  the  table 
after  dinner,  and  stories  are  told  of  famous  old 
gentlemen  who  could  by  tasting  tell  nine  out 
of  eleven  strains  of  wine  which  had  gone  into 
a  blend.  In  such  mellow  atmosphere  the 
years  seem  to  slip  quietly  back,  and  even  the 
outer  barbarian  catches  something  of  the 
Philadelphian  content — a  little  of  the  Phila- 
delphian  feeling  that  the  world  outside  Phila 
delphia  must  be  an  odd  place  into  which  it 
could  be  neither  very  safe  nor  very  pleasant 
to  venture;  that  when  the  right  Madeira  is 
upon  the  sideboard,  the  fire  and  candles  lit 
and  the  curtains  drawn,  that  outer  world  is  a 
world  well  lost. 

The  traditions  of  the  Philadelphian  cuisine 
are  not  only  preserved  around  the  sacred 
kitchen-ranges  of  the  best  families,  but  are 
kept  up  by  various  public  organizations  os 
tensibly  devoted  to  other  purposes.  There  is 
something  suggestive  of  the  banquets  of  the 
London  City  Companies  in  the  dinners,  for 
example,  of  the  Philadelphian  insurance  com 
panies.  And  pleasant  customs  have  grown  up 
through  the  long  Philadelphian  years.  The 
insurance  company  which  is  popularly  and 
prettily  called  "The  Green  Tree"  was  dining 
' — and  dining  well — when  the  news  came  of 


36          American  Towns  and  People 

the  death  of  Washington,  and  to  this  day  a 
toast  to  his  memory  is  drunk  each  month  by 
the  assembled  company. 

In  Philadelphia  one  is  not  displeased  that 
even  the  memory  of  the  first  President  is  fra 
grant  of  good  cooking.  The  memoirs  of  the 
days  when  the  town  was  the  nation's  capital 
are  very  considerably  concerned  with  Mr. 
Washington's  dinners,  served  at  four  precisely, 
at  a  table  decorated  with  silver  salvers  and 
alabaster  mythological  figures  two  feet  high! 

There  are  in  Philadelphia  various  social 
and  club  organizations  devoted  almost  exclu 
sively  to  culinary  aims.  At  one  of  these  a 
dinner  cooked  by  the  members  themselves  is 
the  greatest  tribute  which  can  be  paid  to  a 
lovely  lady  visiting  the  city.  And  the  "Fish 
ing  Company  on  the  Schuylkill,"  now  com 
pelled  by  the  pollution  of  that  once  limpid 
stream  to  eat  fish  only,  not  to  catch  them,  is  a 
historic  institution,  no  mere  club.  Most  of 
us  remember  some  blithe  collegiate  indiscre 
tion,  committed  under  the  influence  of  "Fish- 
house  Punch."  But  not  all  know  the  pleasant 
history  of  the  organization  from  which  the 
beverage  takes  its  name,  which  has  so  long 
existed  with  almost  extra-territorial  rights,  a 
corporation  vying  in  pride  and  dignity  with 
the  commonwealth  of  Pennsylvania  itself. 
There  is  an  inerediblv  fat  and  serious  volume 


Who  Is  a  Philadelphian?  37 

giving  the  annals  of  the  Fish-house  through 
the  long,  peaceful  Philadelphian  years. 
Reading  it,  you  are  not  surprised  at  the  seri 
ous  way  in  which  membership  in  such  an  in 
stitution  is  regarded.  There  is  a  period  of 
novitiate,  during  which  Fish-housers-to-be 
must  humbly  appear  at  a  certain  number  of 
fixed  feastings  of  the  company — a  genuine 
Philadelphian  scandal  of  a  year  or  so  ago  was 
of  a  wayward  young  gentleman  who,  having 
started  round  the  world,  brazenly  refused  to 
come  back  to  the  Schuylkill  from  Cochin 
China  to  attend  a  yearly  fish-eating,  and  thus 
lost  the  membership  which  would  have  been 
the  crown  of  steadier  and  maturer  years. 

Here  is  an  admirable  example  of  Philadel 
phian  valuations;  until  you  can  see  the  boy's 
behavior  as  criminal  folly  you  are  unqualified 
for  any  profitable  study  of  the  Philadelphian 
social  structure.  However  fantastic  the 
local  customs  or  prejudices  may  seem  to  the 
stranger,  they  are  genuine  to  the  native. 

A  famous  and  agreeable  example  of  Phila- 
delphianism  is  the  geographical  restrictions  as 
to  the  district  where  polite  life  may  be  led; 
you  may  search  the  world  without  finding 
anything  comparable  to  the  feeling  in  Phila 
delphia  concerning  the  regions  north  of  Mar 
ket  Street.  To  the  dweller  in  the  permitted 
quarter  of  "Chestnut,  Walnut,  Spruce,  and 


38          American   Towns  and  People 

Pine"  Streets,  the  mere  existence  of  creatures 
in  that  outer  darkness  seems  incredible — with 
the  one  curious  exception  to  be  noted,  that  if 
you  belong  to  certain  old  Quaker  families  you 
may  live  in  Arch  Street,  just  over  the  border. 
Otherwise  the  northern  districts  might  be  des 
ert  land  where  a  colony  of  rich  lepers  have 
built  their  palatial  marble  huts.  When  the 
Philadelphian  opera  was  transferred  from 
the  delightful  old  red-brick  Academy  to  the 
vulgar  new  structure  in  North  Broad  Street 
there  were  gallant  ladies  of  the  old  school  who 
swore  roundly  they  would  never  attend  it, 
and  high-bred  creatures  who,  though  weak 
enough  to  go  to  the  opening  performance, 
nevertheless  fainted  away  as  they,  for  the  first 
time  in  their  lives,  crossed  Market  Street  and 
breathed  this  vile  new  air. 

There  is  an  apocryphal  story  of  a  delightful 
and  famous  old  lady  who  had  seen  here  and 
there  at  afternoon  parties  a  younger  woman 
whose  look  somehow  seemed  to  win  friendli 
ness.  Finding  herself  one  day  descending 
some  of  the  best  white-marble  door-steps  in 
company  with  this  agreeable  stranger,  the 
elder  lady  suggested  driving  her  home,  and 
they  stepped  together  into  the  snug  brougham, 
drawn  by  a  sleek,  fat  horse,  and  driven  by  an 
equally  sleek,  fat  coachman. 


Who  Is  a  Philadelphian?  39 

"James,  we  will  drive  Mrs.  X  home,"  was 
the  only  order  given. 

The  brougham  started,  and  for  a  period, 
while  its  occupants  chatted  pleasantly,  wan 
dered  somewhat  aimlessly  through  the  very 
best  streets.  At  last  its  owner,  vaguely  dis 
turbed,  said,  apologetically: 

"I  am  afraid  James  doesn't  know  where  you 
live.  It  is  annoying;  he  always  knows  where 
everybody  lives.  I  apologize  for  having  to 
ask  such  a  question,  but  where  do  you  live, 
my  dear?" 

Her  charming  companion  smiled,  and  then 
mentioned  a  number  in  North  Broad  Street — 
it  may  even  have  been  Spring  Garden  Street — 
an  address  in  the  unmentionable  regions.  The 
Philadelphian — for  we  can  no  longer  so  desig 
nate  the  younger  woman — took  the  blow  gal 
lantly.  The  pleasant  chat  was  resumed,  but 
for  at  least  a  quarter  of  an  hour  more  the 
sleek,  fat  horse  still  ambled  aimlessly  through 
the  very  best  district.  At  last  the  elder  lady 
rose  to  the  situation.  She  tapped  the  glass, 
and,  as  the  sleek,  fat  coachman  halted,  said : 

"I  wonder  if  you  would  mind  telling  James 
yourself  where  to  drive  us,  dear?  I'm  afraid 
he  would  think  it  very  odd  if  I  myself  were 
to  give  him  an  address  north  of  Market 
Street!" 


40          American   Towns  and  People 

The  one  thing  unforgivable  in  Philadelphia 
is  to  be  new,  to  be  different  from  what  has 
been.  North  Broad  Street,  for  example,  may 
be  in  every  way  a  better  place  to  live  in  than 
Walnut  Street,  but  no  one  has  ever  lived  there. 
Hence,  no  one  ever  can.  The  Philadelphian 
likes  to  know  what  to  expect;  novelty  dis 
turbs  his  contentment,  ruffles  him:  A  "society 
circus,"  for  example,  was  suggested  a  few 
years  ago,  but  given  up.  "It  would  be  ex 
tremely  amusing"  was  the  dictum  of  a  social 
arbiter,  "but  it  would  be  too  new  to  please 
Philadelphia." 

A  lady  once  asked  why  it  was  that  she  al 
ways  saw  just  the  same  people  at  the  windows 
of  a  certain  club.  "People!  Those  are  not 
people,"  was  the  gravely  ironic  reply.  "They 
are  painted  on  the  glass  of  the  windows  1"  It 
is  even  possible  to  imagine  this  an  ideal  ar 
rangement  for  a  Philadelphia  club — that  as 
young  men  attain  the  age  at  which  they  come 
into  their  congenital  right  to  sit  at  windows 
the  club  artist  should  install  their  portraits  in 
correct  and  easy  attitudes. 

Of  course,  the  look  of  the  town  has  perforce 
changed  somewhat  with  the  years;  near  the 
center  Chicagoesque  buildings  rudely  scrape 
the  serene,  exclusive  Philadelphian  sky.  But 
there  are  streets  and  squares  in  plenty  where 
old  red-brick  houses  with  white-marble  steps 


Who  Is  a  Philadelphlan?  41 

keep  affectionate  hold  upon  the  past.  Only 
lately  some  of  the  quieter  byways  were  util 
ized  by  moving-picture  actors  for  a  drama  of 
London  life — a  most  authentic  proof  of  the 
continuity  of  the  English  tradition.  Is  it  fan 
tastic  to  wonder  if  the  day  may  not  soon  be 
here  when  the  British  "movies"  themselves 
will  be  forced  to  go  to  Philadelphia  to  find 
London  streets,  unchanged  and  unvexed  by 
modernization?  The  link  with  the  Colonial 
days  is  never  obtrusive  in  Philadelphia  (noth 
ing  is  obtrusive  there),  but  you  can  still  find 
elderly  people  who  speak  of  the  voyage  west 
ward  from  England  as  "going  out"  to  Amer 
ica.  Only  this  year  a  negro  bootblack  in  a 
barber-shop  spoke  of  a  gentleman's  silk  hat 
as  a  "beaver"!  And  a  mere  debutante,  a  child 
in  white  tulle,  enthusiastically  pro-Allies  and 
pro-English,  said  this  winter  that  she  hoped 
people  now  saw  what  a  mistake  they  made  in 
1776! 

The  only  thing  that  can  wholly  go  out  of 
existence  in  Philadelphia  is  Philadelphia  it 
self — if  one  may  venture  on  paradox.  This, 
some  pessimists  say,  is  happening  in  the  tre 
mendous  exodus  to  country  homes  in  the  fat, 
well-groomed  country  that  lies  correctly  along 
the  Main  Line.  The  trolley-cars  have  made 
the  narrow  old  streets  of  the  town  pande 
monium.  But  the  motor  arrived  just  in  the 


42          American  Towns  and  People 

nick  of  time  to  keep  country  life  from  being 
really  country  life.  These  so-called  country 
people  think  nothing  of  driving  twenty  miles 
to  town  to  dine  and  dance.  So,  for  the  time 
being  at  least;  it  is  only  as  if  Chestnut,  Wal 
nut,  Spruce,  and  Pine  Streets  had  been  ex 
tended  into  the  lovely  green  suburbs.  There 
their  solid  elegance  and  their  grave  decorum 
still  hold  sway,  and  Philadelphia  is  still 
Philadelphia. 

Not  even  youth  prevents  a  Philadelphia's 
being  Philadelphian.  It  was  a  gay  young  dog 
who  commented  upon  a  painting  exhibited 
at  the  academy:  "I  don't  think  it  is  worth 
much  as  a  portrait.  No  Philadelphian  ever 
sat  with  her  legs  crossed."  And  here  may  be 
considered  boards  of  censors  of  moving  pic 
tures,  the  newest  and  most  ridiculous  gauges 
of  public  morality.  It  is  significant  that  a 
hero  who  in  other  towns  had  roguishly  put  a 
wet  head  from  between  the  curtains  of  a 
shower-bath  was  not  permitted  to  do  so  before 
Philadelphian  audiences.  The  example  is 
taken  at  random  out  of  probable  hundreds. 
The  point  is  that  the  note  of  Philadelphian 
decorum  is  strongly  struck. 

But  Philadelphian  decorum  requires  ex 
planation.  It  derives,  of  course,  partly  from 
the  Quaker  tradition.  But  even  in  the  eight 
eenth-century  days  there  were  what  were 


IV ho  Is  a  Philadelphian?  43 

quaintly  called  "Wet  Quakers,"  ladies  who 
wickedly  wore  laces  and  ribands.  And  as  to 
Church-of-England  circles,  it  is  well  to  re 
member  that  the  funds  for  the  lovely  steeple 
of  Christ  Church  were  the  product  of  lot 
teries.  Even  now  the  town  has,  as  it  were, 
the  paradoxical  reputation  of  being  both  fast 
and  slow.  Its  inner  circles  are  understood  to 
be  committed  to  f  riskiness  and  agreeable  dev 
ilments  of  all  kinds.  But  it  is  also  understood 
that  all  this  liveliness  must  be  kept,  as  it  were, 
in  the  family.  Misconduct  of  all  descriptions 
is  quite  permissible,  but  only  among  the  well 
born  and  in  the  hallowed  privacy  of  the  home. 

There  is,  of  course,  a  certain  amount  of  pub 
licity  even  in  the  best  Philadelphian  lives. 
Noblesse  oblige.  It  is,  for  example,  the  fash 
ion  to  sip  and  dance  on  "opera  night"  at  the 
restaurant  of  the  newest  and  smartest  hotel. 
But  the  care  with  which  the  tables  are  assigned 
to  the  well-born,  and  the  decorous,  gilded  ele 
gance  of  the  whole  scene,  rob  the  occasion  of 
that  welcome  vulgarity  which  elsewhere  in 
the  world  makes  restaurants  preferred  to 
homes. 

Whatever  may  be  the  vivacity  of  small, 
discreet  parties  given  for  well-seasoned 
women  of  the  world,  the  great  balls  are  al 
ways  for  debutantes,  to  honor  sweet,  girlish 
life  in  white  muslin  and  blue  ribbons.  Here 


4.4          American  Towns  and  People 

again  the  "Southern  note"  is  evident.  It  is 
true  that  often  these  innocently  aimed  func 
tions  are  done  upon  a  scale  of  splendor  which 
recalls  Imperial  Rome.  To  celebrate  the  en 
trance  of  a  young  Philadelphian  maiden  into 
society  orchids  bloom,  tropic  birds  warble  in 
expensive  jungles,  and  rare  butterflies  are  re 
leased  to  flutter  through  one  mad  night.  Such 
events,  duly  recorded  in  the  nation's  press,  are 
public  testimony  to  the  city's  wealth,  its  abil 
ity  to  compete  in  magnificence  and  lavishness 
with  the  wanton  metropolis  itself.  But  hav 
ing  occasionally  during  the  winter  season  thus 
combined  civic  duty  with  pleasure,  Philadel 
phian  liveliness  resumes  its  deep,  dark  flow. 

The  natural  result  of  this  guarding  of  gayety 
like  a  sacred  flame  is  the  Sabbath  calm  which 
both  traditionally  and  actually  broods  over 
the  great  city.  For  the  stranger  this  is  most 
to  be  noted  in  the  deserted  evening  streets. 
Philadelphians  will  promenade  no  nocturnal 
sidewalks.  When  they  venture  forth  to  places 
of  entertainment  they  scurry  as  if  to  cover; 
and  if,  upon  the  return,  they  stop  for  supper, 
they  take  to  restaurants  as  to  the  trenches. 
The  town,  in  short,  does  not  approve  of  dark 
ness — it  would  take  a  midnight  sun  to  make 
midnight  popular  in  Philadelphia. 

Perhaps  the  most  significant  thing  about  the 
one  great  Philadelphian  revel,  the  New  Year's 


Who  Is  a  Philadelphian?  45 

"Mummers'  Parade,"  is  that  it  takes  place  at 
eight  in  the  morning!  Elsewhere  in  the  coun 
try  exhausted  millions  are  still  faint  and  wan 
from  the  pleasures  of  the  night  before,  but 
Philadelphia,  having  already  passed  the  night 
in  revels,  goes  forth  like  a  somewhat  dissi 
pated  lark  to  celebrate  a  festival  of  Dionysos 
at  the  crack  of  dawn.  Between  eight  and  nine 
thousand  take  part,  members  of  various  Mum 
mers'  clubs,  "Silver  Crown,"  "Lobster," 
"Charles  Klein,"  "Sauerkraut  Band,"  "D.  D. 
Oswald,"  "Zuzu,"  "Jack  Rose  Accordion 
Band,"  and  a  dozen  other  as  fantastically 
named  organizations.  The  amount  spent  on 
rich  and  elaborate  costumes  runs  into  the 
hundreds  of  thousands.  The  result  is  a  popu 
lar  rejoicing  both  spontaneous  and  gay.  This 
year  the  railways  began  to  advertise  it,  and 
ran  special  trains  even  from  New  York  for  it. 
But  even  so,  it  is  still  true,  broadly  speaking, 
that  no  one  outside  of  Philadelphia  has  ever 
heard  of  it.  Why,  pray,  should  any  one? 
Philadelphia  would  ask.  This  obscurity  is  the 
Philadelphianishness  of  it — unless  you  can 
here  also  vaguely  discern  some  philosophic 
truth  concerning  the  wild  follies  of  a  quiet 
community,  once  the  bridle  is  loosed. 

Of  course,  in  so  great  a  population  there  are 
a  certain  number  of  graceless  pleasure-seek 
ers.  But  in  spite  of  them  public  amusements 


46          American  Towns  and  People 

languish.  The  characteristic  aspect  of  a 
Philadelphia  theater  is  gloom  until  the  end  of 
the  week  comes,  when  the  whole  town  with  its 
wife  or  its  best  girl  goes  forth  for  a  traditional 
Saturday  night's  pleasure.  Until  then  the 
home  holds  undisputed  sway. 

Indeed,  the  Philadelphian  boasts,  or  con 
fesses,  if  you  prefer  the  word,  that  his  is  a 
"city  of  homes."  And  the  "homes"  look  very 
snug,  very  homelike  indeed,  especially  at  dusk 
as  one  strolls  through  the  red-brick  streets  and 
sees  the  lamps  lit  and  the  curtains  drawn  upon 
comfortable,  old-fashioned  rooms.  But  the 
impertinent  curiosity  of  the  un-Philadelphian 
insists  on  wondering  what  a  Philadelphian 
home,  more  accurately  and  spiritually,  is.  Is 
it,  for  example,  devoted  to  the  carpet  slipper 
and  the  good  book?  Or  is  it  a  center  from 
which  radiate  moral  forces  making  for  pri 
vate  or  public  virtue?  The  foreign  observer 
must  reluctantly  confess  that  neither  literary 
and  artistic  culture  nor  a  high  civic  standard 
seems  very  obviously  to  be  the  characteristic 
Philadelphian  note.  If  people  read  books  in 
those  comfortable  homes  by  those  pleasant  fire 
sides,  you  somehow  suspect  that  they  fall 
asleep  over  them.  There  is,  of  course,  nothing 
low-bred  about  Philadelphian  ignorance;  it 
is  rather  like  the  gay,  courteous  lack  of  edu 
cation  which  distinguishes  the  South.  Every 


Who  Is  a  Phlladelphian?  47 

one  who  is  any  one  has  learned  what  might  be 
termed  the  necessary  elegancies — as  one  learns 
good  table-manners.  And  it  is  quite  possible 
that  Shakespeare  and  Jane  Austen — to  choose 
at  random — may  be  better  known  in  Philadel 
phia  than  anywhere  else  in  the  country.  But 
passionate  and  omnivorous  general  reading 
there  is  riot.  Book-shops  are  few  and  far  be 
tween,  libraries  are  half  deserted,  and  the 
great  university  of  the  state  seems  to  have  no 
integral  part  in  the  Philadelphian  social 
structure. 

There  is,  in  consequence,  no  social  obliga 
tion  to  be  cultivated  and  artistic — as  there  is 
to  be  well-born,  well-bred,  and  well-dressed. 
Philadelphian  good  taste  can  be  genuine  and 
modest — a  thing  not  always  possible  in  more 
self-conscious  centers  of  culture.  To  take  but 
one  example,  the  town  possesses  some  of  the 
most  notable  private  collections  of  paintings 
in  the  country,  but  they  are,  as  it  were,  little 
known  and  not  much  considered  in  Philadel 
phia.  The  most  remarkable — probably  the 
most  remarkable  in  America — for  years  ex 
isted  in  confused  and  picturesque  superabun 
dance  in  every  nook  and  corner  of  its  owner's 
dwelling;  priceless  masterpieces  hung  about 
the  shaving-stand,  stood  on  the  floor  by  the 
coal-hod,  and,  one  suspected,  lay  hidden  un 
derneath  the  beds.  They  were  incredibly  ill- 


48          American  Towns  and  People 

arranged  for  the  visitor — but  it  was  just  this 
that  somehow  convinced  him  that  they  were 
not  primarily  intended  for  his  pleasure,  but 
for  the  owner's  own.  The  fantastic,  dusty 
disorder  was  a  guarantee  of  the  genuine  love 
of  beauty  which  had  gathered  these  treasures, 
quite  unvexed  by  what  the  town,  streaming  in 
differently  by,  would  think.  Even  when 
Philadelphia  paintings  are  painstakingly  and 
palatially  housed,  it  is  still  true  that  one  feels 
that  the  collecting  must  have  been  done  for 
collecting's  sake. 

Art  is  more  unconsidered  than  despised  in 
Philadelphia.  Good  taste  is  allowed  to  grow 
wild ;  it  is  never  actually  rooted  out.  It  is  true 
that  the  local  artists  huddle  together  in  rather 
frightened  fashion  in  the  artistic  and  literary 
clubs  in  the  pleasant,  quaint  Philadelphian 
alleys,  but  this  is  more  a  tribute  to  our  ingenu 
ous  American  belief  that  art  can,  so  to  speak, 
be  "clubbed"  into  existence,  than  a  real  proof 
that  the  artists  are  treated  as  outcasts.  They 
are  merely  judged  along  other  lines,  and  their 
artistic  achievements  are  no  real  handicap  if 
they  are  well-born,  well-dressed,  and  well- 
bred. 

There  have  been,  perhaps  oddly,  a  consid 
erable  number  of  distinguished  practitioners 
of  the  arts  who  have  originated  in  Philadel 
phia.  But  they  have  generally  practiced  else- 


Who  Is  a  Phlladelphlan?  49 

where.  And  having  thus  transferred  their  ar 
tistic  activities  to  more  suitable  settings,  Phila 
delphia  warms  with  a  certain  pride  in  them. 
A  portrait-painter  who  languished  at  home  re 
ports  that  since  he  moved  his  studio  to  New 
York  he  spends  all  his  time  in  Philadelphia 
executing  the  commissions  he  could  not  secure 
while  domiciled  there. 

So  long  as  it  can  keep  Art  in  its  place,  the 
town  pays  it  a  certain  decent  tribute.  There 
has  long  been  an  Academy  of  the  Fine  Arts, 
and  Miss  Agnes  Repplier  delightfully  records 
that  when  it  first  exhibited  "imported  statues" 
(plaster  copies  of  those  in  the  Parisian 
Louvre),  one  day  a  week  was  set  apart  for  la 
dies,  and  the  statues  were  then  draped!  Now 
—just  to  prove  that  Philadelphia  does  move — 
the  annual  show  of  paintings  is  one  of  the  most 
important  in  the  country.  The  opening  re 
ception  is  of  a  definite  social  value  (just  to 
show  that  society  is  willing  to  give  art  a  leg 
up  now  and  then),  but  it  would  be  considered 
odd  to  look  at  the  paintings  that  evening;  in 
deed,  no  one  but  eccentric,  and  possibly  so 
cially  doubtful  strangers  from  other  cities  does 
so. 

So  much  for  a  home-keeping  community 
and  art!  We  may  now  ask  what  connection 
there  is  between  the  quiet  life  and  public  mo 
rality.  It  is  a  puzzle  to  the  stranger  that  the 


50          American  Towns  and  People 

peaceful  town  has  so  often  been  politically  so 
corrupt.  Indeed,  Philadelphia  is  quite  as  bad 
as  New  York  at  its  Tammany  worst;  it  some 
times  seems  as  if  it  took  a  quiet  pride  in  being 
as  dishonest  as  the  metropolis,  but  without  any 
fuss  and  feathers,  any  vulgar  notoriety  in  the 
newspapers.  The  Philadelphian  home  is  the 
shrine  of  comfort  and  the  altar  of  the  graces, 
but  upon  it  there  burns  no  fierce  moral  flame. 
Philadelphia  did  its  duty  during  the  Revolu 
tion,  but  the  young  ladies  had  some  very 
pleasant  dancing  parties  with  the  British  offi 
cers.  To  the  mind  nourished  upon  terrapin 
and  Madeira  there  is  something  not  quite 
good  style  in  enthusiasms,  especially  grim 
moral  enthusiasms.  William  Maclay,  writ 
ing  wittily  early  in  the  last  century,  betrays 
some  of  these  native  characteristics  in  what  he 
means  as  acid  criticism  of  New  England— 
spiritually  the  very  antipodes  of  his  own  town. 
The  Bostonian,  so  he  says,  "excludes  good  hu 
mor,  affability  of  conversation,  and  accommo 
dation  of  temper  and  sentiment  as  qualities 
too  vulgar  for  a  gentleman."  The  Philadel 
phian,  even  when  he  dies  for  a  cause,  must  do 
so  "affably"! 

It  may  seem  that  such  a  picture  of  genial 
unmorality  cannot  be  an  authentic  one  of  the 
so-called  Quaker  City.  Indeed,  it  is  perhaps 
astonishing  that  talk  of  Quakers  and  Quaker- 


Who  Is  a  Philadelphian?  51 

ishness  should  have  been  put  off  till  so  late  in 
the  Philadelphian  discussion.  Quakers  still 
exist;  there  are  several  prosperous  "meetings" 
in  the  region,  and  there  are  even  to  be  seen 
Friends  who  still  wear  the  sober,  rich  garb  of 
the  sect.  When  charity  at  home  or  abroad  is 
asked  of  the  town,  these  quiet,  half-forgotten 
people  come  unobtrusively  but  generously  for 
ward.  To  the  dim  shadows  of  the  Philadel 
phia  picture  they  lend  a  soft,  rich  color.  But 
somehow  to  the  stranger  the  Quaker  aspect  of 
the  town  is  too  shy  for  capture;  the  Society  of 
Friends  seems  only  part  of  its  gentle  history. 
Rather,  perhaps,  they  go  to  make  up  the  larger 
Philadelphia — the  great,  industrious,  quiet, 
thrifty  town  which  knows  little  of  genealogy 
or  Madeira,  except  by  hearsay;  which  con 
tains  the  largest  body  of  skilled  artisans  in  the 
world,  and  is  the  ideal  home  of  the  magazines 
of  largest  American  circulation,  the  happy, 
prosperous,  unvexed,  average  American  city. 
With  some  such  thoughts  you  look  out  over 
the  long  stretches  of  the  great  city  and  see  the 
smoke  from  ten  thousand  factory  chimneys 
lightly  stain  her  sky,  or  watch  the  majestic 
Delaware  stream  by  carrying  its  traffic  to  the 
sea.  You  stop  thinking  of  the  Philadelphia 
of  fantastic  restrictions  and  queer  codes,  and 
see  only  the  metropolis  of  the  great  common 
wealth  of  Pennsylvania.  Sometimes  on  the 


52          American   Towns  and  People 

Philadelphia!!  streets  you  see  sturdy  young 
women — with  cheeks  like  scrubbed  red  apples 
— wearing  the  garb  of  some  of  the  various  re 
ligious  communities  which  still  flourish  in  the 
state's  rich  farm-lands.  Rich  corn-fields, 
bursting  barns,  autumn  fruit,  all  come  into  the 
imagination,  and  you  see  Philadelphia  as  an 
easy-going,  unemotional,  comfortable,  well- 
fed,  but  still  solid  and  dependable  city.  You 
begin  to  believe  that  simple  happiness  aver 
ages  high  along  the  red-brick  streets  and  in 
the  far-scattered,  trim  suburbs.  You  ask  your 
self  whether  contentment,  Philadelphia's  con 
tribution  and  example  to  the  nation,  is  not  as 
proud  and  worthy  an  achievement  as  any  other 
of  which  an  American  town  might  boast. 


What  Is  a  New-Yorker? 

THE  most  New-Yorkish  of  ladies,  who 
after  an  excessively  brief,  gay  winter  at 
home  habitually  betook  herself  to  the  Rivi 
era,  to  London,  to  Paris,  and  to  the  usual 
spring,  summer,  and  autumn  haunts  of  Eu 
ropean  elegance,  was  once  asked  by  an  in 
telligent  and  curious  foreigner  some  question 
concerning  the  habits  and  customs  of  her  com 
patriots.  She  paused,  meditated  prettily,  and 
then  made  what,  for  the  purposes  of  the  pres 
ent  discussion  of  her  native  town,  is  a  pro 
foundly  significant  reply. 

"I'm  not  sure,"  she  said,  "that  I'm  the  best 
person  to  ask.  You  see  I'm  a  New-Yorker  and 
I  know  so  few  Americans!" 

The  anecdote — authentic,  as  all  anecdotes 
should  be — expresses  with  a  nice  exaggeration 
what  sometimes  seems  to  be  New  York's  pre 
carious  position  upon  the  edge  of  the  North 
American  continent. 

New  York  knows  very  little  about  America ; 
indeed,  it  thinks  it  more  suitable  that  America 
should  know  something  about  New  York;  it 

53 


54          American   Towns  and  People 

has  visited  the  pleasure  resorts  of  the  Eastern 
slope,  it  has  been  to  Washington;  it  has  spent 
the  spring  in  Florida,  and  has  discovered  that 
California  is  delightful,  expensive,  and  not 
too  "American."  But  the  vague  stretches  of 
the  great  middle-Westernland  are,  so  it 
imagines,  peopled  by  dull  creatures,  speak 
ing  roughly  and  not  knowing  pleasure.  With 
great  tranquillity  New  York  assumes  that  it 
is  the  most  habitable  place  in  the  country. 
And  it  hears  calmly  that  it  is  "foreign." 

It  is  the  privilege  of  all  American  cities  to 
sustain  a  large  foreign  population.  But  the 
metropolis  is  so  accessible  from  Ellis  Island 
that  its  foreigners  are  not  only  numerous,  but 
have  the  bloom  still  on.  They  exhibit  a  re 
luctance  to  go  farther.  Associations  arc 
formed  abroad  and  government  agents  come 
here  for  the  purpose  of  inducing  immigrants 
to  "move  on."  It  may  be  because  the  foreign 
ers'  unwillingness  to  live  anywhere  but  in  New 
York  seems  so  natural  and  forgivable  that 
New-Yorkers  welcome  the  visitors,  and  assign 
to  them  large  parts  of  the  town.  Aliens  exist 
not  only  in  the  slums,  but  in  Fifth  Avenue ;  in 
deed  they  are  so  frequent  in  the  best  society 
that  almost  every  fashionable  New  York  lady, 
so  it  is  said,  now  has  a  pet  foreigner. 

Foreigners  do  not  seem  strange  in  New 
York;  they  belong  there.  On  a  spring  after- 


What  Is  a  New-Yorker?  55 

noon  not  long  ago  there  was  to  be  seen  near 
the  lovely  white-marble  Tower  of  Babel  in 
Madison  Square  an  odd-looking,  long-haired, 
bareheaded,  barefooted,  natural-bearded  man 
dressed  in  a  single  dirty  white  wool  garment, 
an  apostle  of  simple  living,  who  was  remem 
bered  by  one  observer  as  spreading  his  frowzy 
gospel  five  years  earlier  on  a  Swiss  steamboat. 
The  point  is  that  in  New  York  he  excited  less 
comment  and  seemed  more  at  home  than  he 
had  seemed  at  home.  And  so,  to  the  New  York 
eye,  seem  the  Cubans  at  the  hotels,  the  Argen 
tines  at  the  cabarets,  the  Italians  in  the  gallery 
at  the  opera,  the  Hungarians  at  sidewalk  cafes 
in  Second  Avenue,  the  Yiddish  actors  on  the 
Bowery,  and  so  on  through  the  long  romantic 
catalogue  of  the  town.  Goulash  and  chop 
suey  and  spaghetti  are  no  stranger  than  pie  to 
the  American  New-Yorker;  he  has  made  his 
culinary  tour  du  monde  within  the  limits  of 
his  own  island.  He  might  well  seem,  to  the 
more  deeply  indigenous  visitor  from  the  Miss 
issippi  Valley,  as  foreign  as  the  foreigner. 

Even  were  there  no  aliens  in  the  town,  salt 
water  laps  on  every  side  of  it,  and  there  is  a 
fair  seaway  to  the  four  corners  of  the  globe. 
When  the  docks  and  liners  with  steam  up  lie 
little  farther  away  than  the  railway  stations, 
it  is — or  was— literally  simpler  for  a  New- 
Yorker  to  go  abroad  than  to — shall  we  say 


56          American   Towns  and  People 

Bar  Harbor?  It  is  quite  easy  to  feel  that  the 
Battery  is  half-way  to  Europe — a  famous  old 
London  actor,  while  he  was  playing  in  Broad 
way,  used  to  go  every  Saturday  morning  to  the 
green  park  at  the  town's  tip-end  and  watch 
the  steamers  go  through  the  Narrows  to  Eng 
land  ;  it  softened  his  feeling  of  being  far  away. 
The  noble  harbor  into  which  the  Hudson 
streams  is  our  chief  gateway  to  the  Atlantic, 
and  though  few  New-Yorkers  lounge  along 
the  waterside,  they  inhabit,  for  all  that,  a 
great  port  of  the  sea,  and  their  natural  herit 
age  is  easy  access  to  foreign  lands.  Whether 
or  not,  according  to  statistics,  New-Yorkers 
travel  more  than  other  Americans  is  beside 
the  point;  actually  and  naturally  more  ties  and 
interests  and  memories  and  hopes  bind  them 
to  the  transatlantic  world.  Philadelphia  and 
Boston  may  lie  upon  some  traditional  and 
spiritual  promontory  nearer  England,  but 
New  York  is  closer  to  the  whole  of  Europe. 
Your  head-waiter  is  just  back  from  France, 
your  bootblack's  cousin  has  been  arrested  at 
Athens  and  your  friend  at  the  club  has  had 
a  letter  from  his  sister  who,  married  to  an 
Englishman,  is  now  at  Salonica.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  New  York  faces  east.  It  feels  it 
self  at  once  our  ambassador  to  Europe  and 
our  reception  committee  to  the  visiting  for 
eigner. 


What  Is  a  New-Yorker?  57 

The  first  months  of  war  made  it  exceed 
ingly  clear  to  the  philosophical  observer  that 
American  interests  in  European  events  varied 
directly  as  the  distance  from  New  York.  By 
this,  of  course,  it  is  not  meant  that  everywhere 
in  the  land  the  European  cataclysm  did  not 
stir  to  somber,  even  tragic,  pity.  But  it  was 
in  New  York,  at  least  during  that  first  year, 
that  crowds  stood  and  debated  about  the  bulle 
tin-boards  all  through  the  night,  and  that  war 
hung  heaviest  in  the  overcharged  and  sultry 
air.  The  tenseness  grew  less  even  two  hours 
away — a  visitor  to  Philadelphia  that  winter 
found  for  four  days  in  one  week  no  war  news 
on  the  first  page  of  his  morning  paper,  a  thing 
inconceivable  in  New  York.  The  over 
wrought  metropolis,  indeed,  exaggerated  the 
indifference  to  the  European  event  reported 
to  exist  elsewhere,  and  asserted  that  in  the  re 
mote  West  Americans  had  not  heard  the  guns 
in  Belgium,  did  not  even  know  there  was  a 
war.  New  York  was  then  almost  inclined  to 
make  a  merit  of  its  foreignness.  Relief  funds, 
administered  in  Wall  Street,  were  generously 
aided  from  the  local  purse,  with  a  unity  of 
effort  which  the  great  town  does  not  often  lend 
to  domestic  good  works;  foreignness  took  on 
a  look  both  interesting  and  gallant. 

But  foreignness,  especially  in  the  antebel 
lum  years,  was  a  term  synonymous  with  un- 


58          American   Towns  and  People 

Americanism;  it  was  an  accusation  brought 
against  the  metropolis  by  almost  the  whole 
country.  The  visitor  to  our  shores  is  button 
holed  in  the  corridor  of  his  New  York  hotel 
by  the  emissaries  of  the  regions  west  of  the 
Alleghanies  and  warned  that  New  York  is 
not  American,  but  wholly  foreign.  Such  dark 
hints  are  of  course  excessively  confusing  to 
the  foreigner,  who  has  never  in  his  life  seen 
anything  less  like  his  native  land  than  New 
York.  In  his  hotel  his  very  bedroom  has  ter 
rified  him  with  its  necessity  for  confiding  his 
most  intimate  needs  to  an  impersonal  tele 
phone  in  the  wall  instead  of  to  a  waiter  or  a 
chambermaid.  Below,  in  the  gigantic  gilded 
corridors,  a  strange  mob  surges  to  and  fro;, in 
the  bar  lurk  unknown  and  insidious  drinks; 
and  in  the  restaurant  strange  dishes  like  soft- 
shell  crabs,  the  technique  of  eating  which  is 
totally  a  matter  of  conjecture  and  experiment. 
Outside  the  town  suggests  that  it  is  subject 
to  frequent  earthquakes  or  bombardments. 
Elevated  trains  shoot  above  his  head,  at  his 
feet  chasms  yawn  and  bombs  explode.  In  the 
rare  parts  of  the  town  which  seem  at  all  fin 
ished,  white  towers  scrape  the  high,  pale  sky, 
and  marble  palaces  quite  unlike  any  com 
mercial  constructions  he  knows  line  the 
crowded  avenue.  As  for  the  regions  dedi 
cated  to  theatrical  and  other  nocturnal  pleas- 


The  park  affords  charming  vistas  of  the  city  beyond. 


What  Is  a  New-Yorker?  59 

ures,  they  blaze  barbarically  with  lights  and 
have  the  air  of  being  quite  temporarily  im 
provised.  New  York  must  present  to  his  star 
tled  alien  eye  the  appearance  of  an  extrava 
gantly  rich  mining-camp,  where  the  loot  of 
European  luxury  is  being  offered  to  hetero 
geneous  myriads,  many  of  whom,  with  their 
nuggets  and  dust  in  their  belts,  are  there  avow 
edly  to  "shoot  up  the  town." 

The  presence,  in  protected  corners,  of 
French  chefs  and  head-waiters  known  in  Lon 
don,  or  even,  in  one  of  the  rougher  streets  of 
shacks,  of  the  most  expensive  Italian  opera 
in  the  world,  will  never  persuade  the  intelli 
gent  foreigner  that  this  is  Europe.  And  we 
ourselves  will  do  well  to  consider  his  point 
of  view.  In  this  sense  of  being  a  mere  con 
fused  shifting  camp  or  fair,  of  being  perma 
nently  the  least  permanent  place  in  the  world, 
New  York  is  the  newest,  freshest,  most 
American  of  our  cities.  It  is  sometimes  al 
leged  that  modern  steel  construction  is  making 
it  difficult  to  tear  the  town  down  every  night 
and  rebuild  it  every  morning,  but  this  is  mere 
optimism.  New  York  Is  experimental  in  its 
vague  polyglot  spendthrift  inability  to  find 
out  just  what  it  really  is. 

Philadelphia  and  Boston,  besides  a  credit 
able  to-day,  still  bear  the  evidences  of  an  hon 
orable  yesterday;  and  Chicago,  to  take  that 


60          American   Towns  and  People 

great  city  as  typical  of  trans-Alleghany  Ameri 
canism,  already  shows  not  merely  her  present, 
but  the  concrete,  clean-cut,  self-conscious,  de 
liberate  outlines  of  a  future.  They  have,  all 
of  them,  a  more  highly  flavored  local  quality, 
a  more  definite  personality.  New  York  does 
its  best  to  forget  its  past  and  to  be  careless 
of  its  future.  It  has  amazingly  little  civic 
conscience.  Of  course  the  speculators  in  real 
estate  and  the  politicians  force  the  town  to 
build  subways  and  give  such  hostages  to  for 
tune,  but  one  sometimes  feels  that  New  York 
is  willing  to  engage  in,  these  constructions 
mainly  because  it  likes  the  noise  and  gains 
from  the  attendant  discomfort  an  agreeable, 
lively  sense  that  something  is  happening.  The 
metropolis  is  a  lusty  young  giant,  yelling  and 
shouting,  building  and  pulling  down,  and 
gayly  tossing  about  an  excess  of  expensive  and 
lovely  toys.  It  is  difficult  to  say  what  New 
York  is  or  will  be,  because  it  already  is,  and 
probably  will  be  a  little  of  everything.  It 
is  monstrously  big  and  inconceivably  vigorous. 
It  is  our  one  great  city  in  that  it  is  almost 
a  microcosm  of  the  world.  But  though  it  may 
contain  everything  foreign  that  there  is  in  Eu 
rope,  Asia,  and  Africa,  it  is  still,  everything 
summed  up,  not  foreign.  It  is  not  America, 
but  it  is  very  American. 

None  of  our  great  towns  has  anything  com- 


What  Is  a  New-Yorker?  61 

parable  to  New  York's  "floating  population" 
— does  the  phrase  not  suggest  agreeable  ques 
tions  as  to  what  they  float  upon?  There  are 
never  enough  hotels  to  accommodate  the  ar 
rivals;  cut  a  hole  in  any  New  York  wall  on 
almost  any  street,  hang  a  hotel  sign  above  it, 
and  you  will  find  that  a  stream  of  patrons 
mechanically  begins  to  pass  through  it  and 
"register."  The  openings  of  the  great  hotels 
of  the  metropolis  are  national  events,  and  their 
characteristics  are  subjects  for  enlightened 
discussion  in  the  remotest  hamlets  of  the  land. 
It  was  not  so  very  long  ago  that  one  of  them 
had  neat  attendants  in  uniform,  with  "Guide" 
in  gold  lettering  upon  their  caps,  whose  whole 
duty  was  to  conduct  visitors  from  afar  through 
the  huge  new  pile.  Troops  of  visitors  there 
were.  It  may  reasonably  be  doubted  whether 
they  found  time  during  their  stay  in  New 
York  to  visit  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of 
Fine  Arts,  but  they  gravely  inspected  what 
was  to  them  both  more  interesting  and  more 
important. 

The  luxury,  confusion,  the  gigantic  scale  of 
these  establishments,  and  the  high  degree  of 
their  organization  are  almost  beyond  descrip 
tion.  It  was  lately  asserted  that  at  any  one  of 
the  newest  and  most  extravagant  the  jewels 
stolen  from  guests'  apartments  mounted  regu 
larly  to  twenty-five  hundred  dollars7  worth 


62          American  Towns  and  People 

a  week,  and  it  was  gravely  suggested  that  so 
well  run  was  one  hotel  in  particular  that  the 
stealing  there  was  probably  done  by  the  ho 
tel's  own  well-drilled  band  of  thieves,  who 
could,  by  arrangement  with  chambermaids 
and  watchmen,  see  their  patrons  were  as 
little  disturbed  as  possible  while  suffering  the 
inevitable  slight  losses.  At  any  rate,  it  is  ob 
vious  that  in  the  New  York  atmosphere  of 
extravagance  such  losses  are  no  more  than  flea- 
bites  were  in  the  humbler,  old-fashioned  hos- 
telries  of  our  grandfathers. 

Everywhere  through  New  York  the  float 
ing  population  may  be  observed  floating.  In 
certain  parts  of  the  town  and  in  certain  moods 
it  seems  out  of  the  question  that  there  should 
be  such  a  thing  as  a  resident  population.  It 
is  in  fact  a  favorite  statement  that  the  night 
restaurants  and  the  cabarets  and  the  roof-gar 
den  "shows"  are  only  visited  by  out-of-town 
people.  It  may  be  stated  flatly  that  this  is 
wholly  untrue  and  a  most  unfair  attempt  to 
shift  the  blame.  New  York  has  in  certain  as 
pects  its  own  distinction  and  its  own  sober 
merits,  but  it  must  be  admitted  that  among  all 
our  towns  it  excels  in  exuberant,  unabashed, 
and  vulgar  pleasure-seeking.  And  this  is  not 
wholly  to  the  credit  (or  discredit)  of  the 
floating  population.  The  taste  for  "floating" 
most  notably  exists  among  the  fixed  inhabi- 


What  Is  a  New-Yorker?  63 

tants.  The  cabarets  may  possibly  not  be  habit 
ually  visited  by  old  ladies  descended  from  the 
Knickerbocker  families,  by  professors  of  Co 
lumbia  University,  by  lodgers  at  either  the 
Martha  Washington  or  the  Mills  Hotels,  by 
ministers  of  the  gospel,  or  by  curators  of  the 
Natural  History  Museum,  to  pick  at  random 
among  admirable  existing  types,  but  they  are 
frequented  by  some  millions  of  New-Yorkers. 
The  metropolis  does  not  adapt  its  tastes  to 
those  of  its  out-of-town  visitors.  They  would 
not  wish  that  it  should.  They  have  not  come 
to  the  metropolis  for  "home  cooking"  in  any 
conceivable  or  figurative  meaning  of  that 
phrase.  They  are  there  to  enjoy  themselves 
New-Yorkishly,  and  proudly  to  carry  the  gos 
pel  and  the  technique  of  pleasure  back  to  the 
waste  places  of  the  country. 

New  York  has  from  Revolutionary  times 
accepted  with  equanimity  the  role  of  Siren 
City;  indeed,  she  expects  novelists  and  play 
wrights  to  portray  the  dangers  which  lurk 
within  her  bosom  for  pure  young  men  and 
women  from  the  country.  Boston  and  Phila 
delphia  are,  Heaven  knows,  not  free  from  evil, 
but  there  is  something  faintly  ridiculous  in 
the  idea  of  their  luring  men  to  destruction. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  novel  or  play  upon 
these  lines  dealing  with  Chicago  is  expected 
to  flatter  that  city  as  it  does  New  York.  Chi- 


64          American   Towns  and  People 

cago  is  remote  enough  to  be  independent  ot 
New  York,  even  in  its  vices. 

New  York  is  notably  at  ease  with  pleas 
ure.  The  habits  and  customs  of  pleasure-seek 
ing  are  widely  diffused,  are  not  the  property 
of  the  so-called  upper  classes.  For  example, 
every  one  dines  at  restaurants  in  New  York, 
and  as  night  falls  probably  more  people  are 
simultaneously  in  evening-dress  than  in  any 
other  city  in  the  country.  There  is  here  no 
wish  to  fall  into  the  common  vulgarity  of  at 
taching  a  semi-sacred  character  to  the  "swal 
low-tail,"  but  its  habitual  employment  is 
symptomatic.  The  easiest  way  to  judge  to 
what  extent  a  town  "dresses  for  dinner"  is  to 
notice  how  many  men  may  be  observed  walk 
ing  in  such  attire  or  patronizing  the  street 
cars,  for,  unquestionably,  there  are  American 
cities  where  males  so  clad  have  a  guilty  and 
hunted  look  and  only  venture  forth  in  "hacks." 
Therefore,  the  way  the  Fifth  Avenue  side 
walks  and  the  Madison  Avenue  cars  blossom 
forth  with  top-hats  and  white  ties  on  a  pleas 
ant  evening  is  significant.  More  than  else 
where,  too,  is  New  York  evening-dress  merely 
what  one  wrears  in  the  evening,  not  a  garb 
necessarily  reserved  for  occasions  and  places 
of  supreme  elegance.  Persons  in  such  attire 
may,  for  example,  often  be  seen  supping,  with 
out  fear  or  self-consciousness  and  for  fifteen 


What  Is  a  New-Yorker?  65 

cents,  in  the  famous  excellent  but  cheap  white- 
tiled  Childs'  restaurants. 

And  the  habit  of  carrying  a  cane,  fantastic 
though  the  assertion  may  seem,  might  be  made 
the  basis  of  a  philosophical  differentiation  of 
our  various  cities.  A  New-Yorker  really 
bears  a  walking-stick  in  blithe  unconsciousness 
that  he  is  doing  anything  unusual.  But  a  Bos 
ton  gentleman  of  the  very  highest  rank  re 
cently  seriously  envied  a  New  York  friend 
who  sustained  himself  with  a  cherry  stick  dur 
ing  business  hours.  And  it  is  not  so  many 
years  ago  that  a  credulous  new  arrival  in  Chi 
cago  was  gravely  warned  that  an  attempt  to 
carry  a  morning  cane  down  Dearborn  Street 
might  result  in  physical  violence. 

Perhaps  the  chief  impression  which  the 
metropolis  makes  is  of  the  vivacity  of  its  life. 
It  is  the  completest  expression  of  our  national 
joie  de  vivre.  And  it  is  pleasant  to  record  that 
for  the  most  characteristic  moment  of  this 
quality  you  would  not  cite  Broadway  at  night, 
but  Fifth  Avenue  by  day.  The  sparkle  of 
this  famous  street  is  perhaps  largely  due  to 
the  New  York  climate.  Climates  are  never 
perfect,  but  among  the  world's  great  cities  the 
American  metropolis  is  singularly  fortunate. 
It  is  flooded  with  sunlight,  and  on  its  best  days 
the  air  has  a  crisp  and  tonic  quality.  By  a 
tacit  understanding,  ill-dressed  and  sad  peo- 


66          American  Towns  and  People 

pie  keep  off  Fifth  Avenue.  On  a  bright  morn 
ing  there  is  no  resisting  the  street's  gay  intoxi 
cation.  The  most  expensive  shops  in  the 
world  are  close  at  hand,  the  best  restaurants 
near  by.  Brave  men  lounge  at  the  windows 
of  exclusive  clubs,  and  fair  women  cut  cou 
pons  at  fashionable  banks.  Life  seems  indeed 
worth  living.  The  whole  town  is  gay.  Even 
children  and  nurse-maids  in  the  Park  seem 
more  engagingly  clean  and  innocent  and  spir 
ited  than  elsewhere,  as  if  they,  too,  felt  the 
call  of  happiness.  It  is  worth  while  noting 
the  clearness  of  much  of  New  York's  air, 
doing  justice  to  the  clean  and  simple  liveliness 
of  much  of  its  enjoyment,  because  its  prom 
inence  as  one  of  the  world's  chief  centers  of 
dissipation  and  pleasure-seeking  has  done  its 
reputation  bad  service  with  many  people  of 
virtue  and  good  taste. 

So  much  may  be  respectfully  submitted  in 
New  York's  defense,  that  if  a  town  sets  out 
to  be  gay  there  is  a  certain  merit  in  being  gay. 
To  the  deeper  consideration  of  this  proposi 
tion  every  one  is  invited  to  bring  whatever 
degree  of  toleration  and  philosophy  life  has 
taught  him.  It  is  certain,  however,  that  just 
where  New  York  is  most  obviously  alluring, 
it  is  also  most  obviously  hard,  vulgar,  tawdry, 
and  repellent.  There  is  possibly  no  city  in 
the  world  where  such  an  exhibition  could  pass 


What  Is  a  New-Yorker?  67 

without  protest  as  enlivened  the  hours  of  2 
A.M.  during  New  York's  second  winter  of  the 
war.  While,  to  the  imagination,  the  guns 
about  Verdun  boomed,  the  young  ladies  of 
the  chorus,  who  had  already  exhibited  them 
selves  in  and  out  of  a  series  of  satisfactorily 
indecent  costumes,  came  forth,  for  the  climax 
of  the  night's  pleasure,  dressed  as  Red  Cross 
nurses,  and  kicked  the  ruffles  of  their  under 
wear  into  the  faces  of  the  half-intoxicated 
occupants  of  the  first  row  of  tables.  It  is  at 
such  moments  that  you  must  think  hard  of 
the  vastness  of  New  York,  of  the  variety  of 
its  inhabitants  and  the  multiplicity  of  its  inter 
ests.  You  must  try  to  believe  that  by  2  A.M. 
some  God-fearing  people  are  already  in  bed 
and  that  others  may  be  reading  a  good  book. 
You  must  think  that,  besides  roof-gardens, 
there  are  theaters  crowded  for  Shakespearian 
revivals  and  concert-halls  jammed  with  lov 
ers  of  Beethoven.  You  must  not  forget  that 
great  institutions  of  learning  crown  the  city's 
rocky  heights,  and  that  hospitals  dot  its  lower 
levels.  You  must  remember  that  there  are 
not  only  the  idle  rich,  but  the  industrious  poor. 
You  must  again  see  dark  processions  of  the 
unemployed  marching  somberly  up  the  glitter 
of  Fifth  Avenue.  You  must  hear  ringing 
in  your  ears  the  orations  of  the  social  revolu 
tion  delivered  at  the  feet  of  Lincoln  in  Union 


68          American  Towns  and  People 

Square,  as  well  as  the  prattle  of  lovely  ladies 
in  Louis  XVI.  drawing-rooms  who  coquet 
with  new  doctrines  as  they  did  in  France  be 
fore  the  Bastille  fell.  You  must  think  that 
not  only  do  simple,  rich,  Western  millionaires 
migrate  to  the  metropolis,  but  lads  from  an 
older  world  with  their  worldly  possessions  in 
a  handkerchief,  to  whom,  down  the  bay,  Lib 
erty  seems  to  offer  a  welcome  and  the  hazard 
of  new  fortunes.  You  must  consider  while  the 
lights  burn  so  bright  that  it  is  hard  to  be  the 
richest  city  in  the  world  and  always  to  keep 
your  head  on  straight. 

After  the  town's  exuberant  vitality,  its  over 
flowing  wealth  is  its  most  striking  character 
istic.  Wealth's  own  special  enemy,  Mr.  Con 
gressman  Walsh,  is  authority  for  the  state 
ment  that  ninety-two  per  cent,  of  America's 
money  is  in  the  metropolis.  Wall  Street,  now 
the  world's  financial  center,  collects  money, 
and,  besides,  the  continued  immigration  of  the 
rich  from  all  over  the  country  brings  gold  to 
New  York  as  water  to  a  sink-hole.  New 
York  is  the  only  place  any  one  migrates  to, 
with  the  exception  of  Washington.  No  one 
since  Benjamin  Franklin  has  ever  moved  to 
Philadelphia,  and,  with  the  exception  of  some 
few  who  brought  a  special  literary  baggage, 
no  one  has  ever  "settled"  in  Boston.  Chicago 
has  a  few  accessions  from  what  might  be 


What  Is  a  New-Yorker?  69 

termed  the  Chicagoan  province,  but,  after  all, 
Chicago  to  so  many  of  its  indigenous  inhabi 
tants  is  a  way-station  on  the  road.  In  New 
York,  on  the  contrary,  almost  the  hardest  thing 
to  find  is  a  born  New-Yorker.  You  may 
come  to  New  York  with  the  highest  social 
ambitions,  or  you  may  aspire  to  nothing  be 
yond  calling  the  leading  head-waiters  by  their 
first  names,  but  you  believe  there  is  a  place 
for  you  and  your  money  on  Manhattan  Island. 
So,  year  by  year,  the  golden  stream  rises 
higher.  Only  by  the  most  constant  and  care 
ful  extravagance  can  New  York  keep  it  from 
bursting  its  banks. 

It  might  be  thought  that  there  were  tradi 
tions  and  historical  examples  enough  of  how 
to  spend.  But  when  you  consider  the  world's 
long  history  you  find  that  money,  in  the  lavish 
abundance  we  now  know,  existed  in  imperial 
Rome  and  went  out  with  it.  It  was  re-in 
vented  in  Peru,  and,  even  if  you  come  straight 
down  to  the  nineteenth  century,  they  were  rich 
in  Havana  before  they  were  in  New  York. 
The  present  fabulous  riches  have  come  within 
the  memory  of  the  present  generation,  and 
the  problem  of  spending  is  actually  a  fresh 
one,  which  New  York  is  gallantly  trying  to 
solve. 

It  was  long  ago  discovered  that  merely  to 
build  a  large,  costly  house  upon  an  expensive 


70          American   Towns  and  People 

site  was  too  simple  to  be  the  way  out  of  the 
difficulty — how  often  in  our  smaller  Ameri 
can  towns  have  we  seen  the  innocent  local  mil 
lionaire  construct  an  expensive  stone  "home" 
and  then  live  in  it  with  two  Swedish  girls 
as  "help."    Many  of  the  richest  people  in  New 
York  live  in  quite  small  houses;  there  are 
other  ways — such  as  changing  the  drawing- 
room  flowers  three  times  daily,  or  having  a 
decent  valet  for  your  chauffeurs — of  making 
the  money  fly.    It  is  just  the  growth  of  luxu 
rious  detail  in  New  York  which  makes  the  in 
vestigation  of  the  great  city  so  profitable  to 
students  from  the  provinces.     The  lady,  for 
example,  who  gives  a  quiet  little  party  of  six 
to  dine  and  go  to  the  play  and  has  bought 
boxes  at  three  different  theaters,  so  that  her 
guests  may  choose  whichever  suits  their  post 
prandial  mood,  strikes  the  New  York  note 
with  beautiful  clearness.    And  the  gentleman 
who,  in  a  fit  of  half-amused  exasperation  that 
his  favorite  motor-car  was  being  used  one 
morning  to  convey  his  wife's  canary  to  the 
bird-doctor,  sent  home  that  afternoon  a  smaller 
car  for  the  exclusive  use  of  the  feathered  mem 
bers  of  his  household,  is  either  a  New-Yorker 
or  soon  will  be.    There  is,  too,  the  imperial 
gesture,  as  when  lately  for  a  debutantes'  ball 
special  trains  were  sent  to  convey  male  youth 
and  beauty   from   the   three  great   colleges. 


What  Is  a  New-Yorker?^  71 

And,  as  intelligence  has  grown  the  vogue  of 
recent  years  even  in  New  York,  some  people 
find  it  pleasant  to  keep  a  pet  weekly  paper  or 
a-  tame  theater  or  an  opera. 

The  habit  of  extravagance  pervades  the 
whole  New  York  community.  The  shop-girl 
may  have  but  one  dress,  but  it  is  in  the  latest 
style.  No  one  is  ever  more  than  two  weeks 
behind  the  fashion  in  New  York.  People  do 
not  regulate  their  expenditures  according  to 
their  incomes;  they  regulate  their  incomes  ac 
cording  to  their  expenditures,  or  try  to.  An 
extra  cylinder  in  the  motor  means  an  extra 
hour  in  Wall  Street,  that  is  all.  Life  is  so 
full,  so  free,  that  it  seems  almost  ill-natured 
to  be  poor  in  New  York. 

The  moment  has  probably  come  in  what 
is  hoped  is  already  a  glittering  picture  of  the 
metropolis  to  speak  of  "society,"  noting  first, 
however,  that  nowhere  but  in  a  large  city  like 
New  York  is  the  life  of  those  not  "in  society" 
so  full  of  possibilities  of  rational  or  irrational 
enjoyment.  It  is  beside  the  point  to  inquire 
whether  fashionable  New  York  would  like  to 
conduct  its  activities  in  anything  like  decent 
privacy — it  has  no  such  chance.  It  is  the  vic 
tim  of  our  national  passion  for  newspapers. 
It  is,  of  course,  permissible  to  suspect  that  the 
town  is  so  large  that  even  the  most  highly 
placed  can  secure  moments  of  incognito,  and 


72          American   Towns  and  People 

that  a  metropolitan  gossip  can  never  know  all 
her  neighbors'  news.  But  if  you  were  to  judge 
merely  from  the  press,  there  is  no  one  in  West 
Podunk  or  Bird  Center  who  cannot  accurately 
follow  the  daily  and  nightly  movements  of 
New  York's  crowned  heads.  In  the  metropo 
lis  itself  plebeian  intimacy  with  royalty  goes 
even  further.  Two  occupants  of  orchestra 
seats  at  the  opera,  possibly  leading  "buyers" 
for  a  high-class  department-store,  were  lately 
overheard  commenting  upon  the  ornaments 
of  the  boxes.  They  viewed  with  especial 
pleasure  a  famous  lady  in  white  satin,  the 
more  exposed  portions  of  whom  were  covered 
with  the  loveliest  pearls. 

"Yes,  Mrs.  X.  is  looking  wonderful  to-night. 
And  I  think  it's  so  nice  that  every  one  here 
knows  she  is  such  a  good  mother!" 

Is  this  not  an  agreeable  side  of  democracy? 

The  legend  has  grown  up  and  is  believed, 
even  in  New  York,  that  there  is  an  extra  poig 
nant  flavor  to  the  fashionableness  of  New 
York's  fashion,  a  more  glittering  pinnacle 
there  upon  which  the  favored  few  lightly 
balance.  New  York  envies  no  other  fashion 
ableness,  and  though  this  is  offensive  to  other 
cities,  it  gives  a  delightful  serenity  to  New 
York  life  itself. 

Romantic  writers  for  the  Sunday  supple 
ments  talk  of  New  York's  old  families,  and 


What  Is  a  New-Yorker?  73 

indeed  it  is  said  that  obscure  people  still  exist 
who  were  in  society  before  the  'seventies  of 
the  last  century.  But  you  might  hear  more 
talk  in  Chicago  of  old  families  than  in  New 
York,  and  with  reason,  for  it  is  quite  possible 
that  the  reigning  powers  of  the  Western  me 
tropolis  have  been  the  longer  established. 
People  in  New  York  may  have  maiden  aunts 
living  in  the  Stuyvesant  Square  region,  but 
they  visit  them  privately;  the  stranger  may 
perhaps  see  these  nice  old  ladies  in  caps  at 
sunny  windows  where  canary-birds  hang,  but 
he  will  find  no  one  lunching  at  the  Ritz  who 
can  introduce  him  to  them.  Indeed,  the  legen 
dary  Dutch  connection  is  chiefly  useful  in  ex 
cusing  the  stolidity  of  well-born  young  men. 
New  York  is  socially  as  fresh  as  paint  and  as 
bright  as  several  new  dollars. 

The  newspaper  readers  have  all  been  told 
that  the  one  requisite  for  being  very  much  "in 
society"  in  New  York  is  to  be  very  rich.  And 
the  view  finds  support,  it  is  said,  inside  the 
charmed  circle  itself.  At  an  evening  party 
with  song-birds  from  the  Metropolitan  one  of 
the  proudest  queens  left  in  the  middle  of  the 
program.  A  rival,  whose  dislike  of  music 
was  equally  genuine,  rose  to  follow  her,  but 
was  detained  by  the  gentleman  by  her  side, 
himself  a  wit  and  a  noted  arbiter  of  the  ele 
gancies. 


74          American  Towns  and  People 

"No,  my  dear  lady,"  he  said,  "you  aren't 
rich  enough  to  leave  early.  Mrs.  A.  has  ten 
times  your  money — it's  all  right  for  her,  but 
you  must  be  polite  and  stay  till  the  end!" 

We  may  assume,  without  further  discussion, 
that  wealth  receives  its  due  consideration  in 
New  York's  highest  circles.  And  yet,  very 
rich  people  not  in  society  are  much  commoner 
and  much  more  characteristic  in  the  metropo 
lis  than  rich  people  In  it.  The  gentlemen  with 
megaphones  on  the  Seeing-New-York  wagons 
may  know  who  inhabit  all  the  Fifth  Avenue 
palaces;  nobody  else  knows.  The  fabled 
street  of  fashion  is  now  largely  peopled  by  the 
unknown  rich.  The  hotels  and  apartment- 
houses  are  infested  with  them.  Some  of  them 
belong  in  New  York,  others  have  migrated 
there — moths  tempted  by  the  great  metropoli 
tan  adventure.  But,  somehow,  for  all  the  ac 
tivity  of  their  movements,  they  carry  with 
them  a  hint  of  loneliness.  It  is  a  sheer  physi 
cal  impossibility  for  any  social  structure  to  ac 
commodate  them  all.  They  are  condemned  to 
minor  circles,  to  eternal  shopping,  to  theater 
going,  and  to  overeating  in  the  restaurants. 

Indeed,  a  situation  quite  unexampled  in 
all  history  has  arisen  in  New  York.  There  is 
so  much  money  that  there  is  danger  of  its 
coming  to  be  almost  a  drug  on  the  market. 
Rich  people  do  not  always  even  attain  to  the 


BBS 


Vast  aqueducts  cf  traffic  span  the  sky. 


What  Is  a  New-Yorker?  75 

honor  of  being  excluded ;  they  are  more  often 
not  even  known.  Is  it  possible  that  our  great 
national  malady,  wealth,  carries  somewhere 
within  it  its  own  antidote?  Even  now  there 
are  optimistic  New-Yorkers  who,  while  they 
admit  that  there  must  always  be  in  society 
plenty  of  people  whose  money  will  grease  the 
wheels,  allege  that  already  achievement, 
beauty,  intelligence,  charm,  and  wit  are  in 
active  demand. 

If  not  in  demand  in  "society,"  it  is  fairly 
certain  that  they  are  wanted  somewhere  in 
the  vast  city.  New  York  probably  offers  op 
portunity  to  a  greater  variety  of  individual 
social  tastes  than  any  American  towrn.  It  is  a 
metropolis,  if  not  a  capital.  But,  unhappily, 
in  the  latter  phrase  there  lies  a  sting.  If 
Washington  could  only  be.  rolled  into  the 
larger  town  there  would  exist  a  New  York 
which  could  definitely  challenge  comparison 
with  London  or  Paris.  But  so  long  as  the  na 
tion's  affairs  are  transacted  in  the  District  of 
Columbia,  New  York  has  uneasy  moments 
of  haunting  doubt  as  to  whether  it  is  not,  after 
all,  a  mere  settlement  of  Wall  Street  brokers 
and  young  actresses.  The  winter  excursion  to 
Washington  has  become  an  almost  necessary 
adjunct  to  the  New  York  winter.  And  the  so 
cial  opportunities  of  the  capital  are  spoken 
of  in  almost  hushed  tones  by  those  who  would 


76          American   Towns  and  People 

dismiss  Philadelphia  and  Boston  with  a  laugh. 
It  is  a  confession  by  the  confused  and  shape 
less  metropolis  of  social  incompleteness. 

Now  self-consciously  to  remedy  social  in 
completeness  is  a  trait  racy  of  our  American 
soil.  The  process,  always  going  on,  is  what 
gives  perpetually  the  tingling,  exciting  sense 
that  we  are  a  new  country.  New  York,  to  take 
but  one  example,  is  big  and  rich  and  varied 
enough  to  offer  some  sort  of  natural  and  secure 
and  tranquil  perch  for  Art.  But  the  town  is 
so  persuaded  that  Art  is  an  essential  part  of 
a  creditable  metropolitan  existence  that  Art  is 
always  being  chivvied  to  and  fro  by  organiza 
tions  determined  to  uplift  it  and  individuals 
sworn  to  be  Bohemian  at  any  cost.  Already  in 
many  respectable  circles  every  one  has  once 
met  a  painter,  knows  a  writer,  or  calls  an  actor 
by  his  Christian  name. 

And  this  is  but  one  more  stroke  in  the  de 
sired  picture  of  confusion  and  flux  and  change 
which  is  the  portrait  of  New  York.  The  town 
is  a  mere  experimental  laboratory.  In  Bos 
ton  and  Philadelphia  you  can  know  who's  who 
and  what's  what.  And  after  a  certain  ac 
quaintance  with  those  cities  you  can  fairly  pre 
cisely  estimate  their  resources.  New  York  is 
a  grab-bag  in  a  booth  at  the  World's  Fair, 
but  there  is  nothing  you  may  not  hope  to  pull 
from  its  depths.  Its  human  structure,  to 


What  Is  a  New-Yorker?  77 

change  the  metaphor,  is  as  impermanent  as 
its  physical.  It  would  be  a  joke  to  talk  of  a 
settled  and  well-regulated  society  in  such  a 
place.  An  exclusive  dancing-class  or  an  as 
sembly  ball  would  be  grotesque.  Everything 
and  everybody  are  in  the  melting-pot  in  New 
York.  And  though  New  York  is  still  far  from 
the  social  liquid  condition  which  obtains  in 
great  towns  abroad,  there  are  reasons  to  hope 
that  some  day,  when  the  mixing  process  has 
gone  further  and  it  is  more  nearly  possible 
for  any  New  Yorker  to  know  all  New  York, 
the  metropolis  will  be  one  of  the  most  interest 
ing,  stimulating,  and  pleasant  places  in  the 
world  to  inhabit. 

It  is  already,  from  the  American  point  of 
view,  the  most  exciting  and  preoccupying. 
There  is  no  one  who  does  not  go  to  New 
York,  no  one  whom  fate  might  not  send  there 
to  live.  Of  course,  no  writer  can  be  so  de 
luded  as  to  think  that  he  only  can  strip  the 
veil  from  the  metropolis — seven  times  seven 
veils  are  daily  torn  from  it  in  every  magazine 
and  newspaper  in  the  country.  Nothing  new 
can  be  said  about  it.  And  all  can  never  be 
said.  The  best  that  is  to  be  hoped  is  that  what 
ever  may  be  thought  or  recorded  about  the 
American  metropolis  will  derive  some  interest 
from  the  subject — for  New  York,  for  better 
or  for  worse,  is  our  great  national  interest. 


The  Portrait  of  Chicago 

THE  final  insult  to  a  Chicagoan  is  to  recog 
nize  his  town  after  any  absence  from  it. 
A  certain  writer,  planning  to  do  a  certain 
article  on  Chicago,  was  remonstrated  with  by 
a  lady  from  that  metropolis. 

"I  don't  see,"  she  remarked,  "how  you  can 
expect  to  give  an  accurate  picture  of  the  town, 
and  to  do  it  justice;  you  haven't  been  there 
since  January." 

This  conversation,  taking  place  in  April, 
gives  some  measure  of  the  rapidity  with  which, 
in  the  opinion  of  its  inhabitants,  Chicago 
changes.  For  them,  who  know  so  well  that 
each  moment  of  Chicago  history  has  always 
brought  improvement,  and  always  will,  it  is 
small  wonder  that  the  golden  moment  for 
writing  definitely  of  their  town  never  quite 
arrives,  and  that  the  real  Chicago  is  always 
a  little  in  the  future. 

Indeed,  there  is  almost  nothing  in  the  way 
of  change  which  the  Chicagoan  may  not,  with 
some  show  of  reason,  hope  for.  There  is  one 
supreme  symbol  of  the  town's  accomplish 
ment;  now  that  the  Chicago  River,  so  long  a 

79 


80          American  Towns  and  People 

foul  and  unspeakable  stream,  has  been  mirac 
ulously  reversed  in  its  course,  and  flows  inland 
toward  the  Mississippi  in  a  clear  blue  flood 
from  Lake  Michigan's  heart,  it  must  be  ad 
mitted  instantly  that  a  city  which  has  wrought 
this  hydraulic  wonder  is  capable  of  effecting 
any  transformation  which  its  imagination  can 
conceive. 

Here,  at  the  outset  of  the  Chicagoan  discus 
sion,  is  what  one  might  call  the  theme  which 
runs  through  all  its  Western  music.  Chicago 
is  what  all  American  towns  theoretically 
should  be — self-made.  It  did  not  just  grow, 
like  Topsy  and  New  York  and  Philadelphia 
and  Boston,  but  it  is  the  product  of  constant 
and  bitter  effort.  Looking  at  a  map  to-day  and 
observing  the  magnificent  convergence  of  all 
the  railways  and  all  the  steamship  lines  of  the 
great  Middle-Western  country  upon  the  south 
ern  shore  of  Lake  Michigan,  it  is  easy  to  be 
lieve  that  Chicago's  destiny  was  always  mani 
fest.  But  it  cannot  have  been  so  evident  to 
those  early  settlers.  The  town  was  built  in  a 
morass  bordering  a  sluggish,  sullen  stream, 
swept  alternately  by  bitter  winter  gales  and 
scorching  dust-laden  summer  blasts  from  a 
hot  prairie.  For  months  a  blanket  of  driz 
zling  clouds  obscured  the  sun.  Chicago  has 
been  described  by  one  of  its  favorite  sons  as 
"having  no  climate  of  its  own,  but  being 


The  Portrait  of  Chicago  8l 

exposed  to  the  incursions  of  all  the  cli 
mates  there  are."  Of  course  in  these  incur 
sions  must  be  included  rare  days  of  perfect 
weather,  when  the  beauty  of  the  town's  loca 
tion  by  its  great  blue  lake  is  very  moving. 
But  the  rule  still  holds  that,  though  Chicago 
has  a  great  deal  of  climate,  most  of  it  is  bad. 

The  river  has  been  turned  back,  and 
(though  the  sky-scrapers  must  be  built  on 
piles  driven  in  the  water-logged  earth)  the 
mud  in  the  down-town  streets  is  a  thing  of  the 
past;  but  Chicago  has  as  yet  discovered  noth 
ing  which  can  alter  the  essential  quality  of  the 
climate  of  three-quarters  of  its  year.  Exist 
ence  there  seems  predestined  to  be  a  struggle 
against  nature  and  the  powers  of  darkness. 
The  town's  whole  history  has  a  grotesque, 
passionate  epic  quality.  The  old  Chicago  was 
a  smoking  furnace,  a  seething  caldron.  From 
the  windows  of  a  train  creeping  into  it  in  the 
murk  and  mists  of  the  early  morning  the  vast, 
straggling  suburbs,  the  belching  chimneys  on 
remote,  isolated  islands  in  a  grimy  prairie  sea 
had  something  sinister  and  portentous  in  them. 
Any  sweetness  and  light  in  Chicago  must  have 
been  paid  for,  you  feel,  with  tears  and  blood. 
But  the  town's  gallant  inhabitants  have  al 
ways  been  ready  to  pay  that  price,  and  more, 
for  progress.  In  the  spacious  elegance  of 
Michigan  Boulevard,  where  on  one  hand  a 


82          American  Towns  and  People 

symphony  orchestra  plays  and  operatic  sing 
ers  carol,  and  on  the  other  untold  thousands 
of  students,  male  and  female,  ply  all  the  love 
liest  arts  in  marble  halls,  you  feel  invigorated 
and  cheered  by  Chicago's  success  in  being  a 
fully  equipped  center  of  civilization,  whatever 
the  odds  against  it  may  have  been.  Here  is, 
indeed,  the  authentic  and  traditional  Ameri 
canism  which  since  the  Civil  War  has  some 
what  faded  from  sight  along  the  Atlantic  sea 
board,  where  great  and  rich  cities  are  only 
too  apt  to  let  not  only  luxury  and  the  arts,  but 
civic  pride  and  responsibility,  too,  come  as 
they  will.  Here  is  the  reason  for  the  state 
ments  so  often  flung  by  Chicago  in  the  face 
of  its  Eastern  rivals,  that  it  alone  is  the  great 
American  city.  It  has  its  foreign  population 
in  heterogeneous  hordes,  and  its  quarters  of 
the  town  where  alien  languages  prevail,  but  to 
some  extent  it  has  kept  the  early  American 
digestion  of  immigrants ;  it  assimilates  a  tough, 
trans-oceanic  diet  and  makes  of  its  inhabitants, 
if  not  Americans,  at  least  Chicagoans. 

Civic  pride  is  the  real  Chicago  passion — 
pride  in  whatever  achievement  has  been  made, 
and  pride  in  the  sacrifices  entailed  by  what 
ever  achievement  remains  to  be  made.  Never, 
it  may  be  presumed,  in  the  history  of  the  world 
have  its  inhabitants  done  so  much  for  a  town 
in  so  short  a  time.  The  whole  structure  of 


The  Portrait  of  Chicago  83 

civic,  artistic,  and  charitable  institutions  has 
been  created  by  a  few  generations,  who  had 
faith  in  their  chosen  home  and  a  gesture  at 
once  broad  and  imaginative. 

Almost  the  first  of  American  cities,  Chi 
cago  erected  huge  buildings,  planned  great 
boulevards,  and  laid  out  a  spacious  park  sys 
tem.  It  suddenly  built  a  university,  from 
the  beginning  almost  the  largest  in  the  world, 
covering  a  great  waste  tract  with  academic 
halls  and  cloisters.  It  put  huge  bathing  estab 
lishments  in  its  parks  by  its  blue  lake,  so  that 
during  happy  summer  days  the  poorest  Chi- 
cagoan  might  find  his  city  the  ideal  vacation 
resort.  It  set  fountains,  pools,  and  sunken 
gardens  around  great  factories  and  mail-order 
houses,  so  that  some  refreshing  breath  of  art 
might  come  to  the  humblest  worker.  The 
catalogue  of  its  achievements  is  tremendous. 
Indeed,  there  is  an  optimism  in  its  lake  breezes 
which  makes  even  the  most  reluctant  Easterner 
believe  that  if  everything  in  Chicago  is  not 
perfection  it  is  only  because  there  has  not  yet 
been  time  to  make  it  so.  The  things  which 
Chicago  has  had  time  to  finish  often  have  a 
style  and  a  distinction  which  are  not  to  be 
found  in  such  muddle-headed,  floundering 
places  as,  for  instance,  New  York.  The  New- 
Yorker  is  indeed  the  most  striking  and  un 
happy  contrast  possible  to  the  Chicagoan — 


84          American   Towns  and  People 

he  is  fatuously  proud  of  his  town  and  yet  will 
not  turn  his  hand  over  for  it.  The  true  Chi- 
cagoan  will  sell  his  soul  for  Chicago,  and 
sometimes  has  to.  Upon  the  shoulders  of 
each  typical  Chicagoan  Chicago  lies  like  a 
burden.  If  you  are  not  willing  to  accept  this 
responsibility  you  move  away  from  Chicago 
And  it  has  been  maliciously  suggested  that  the 
joie  de  vivre  so  conspicuous  in  the  expatriates 
from  that  city  scattered  over  the  whole  world 
may  be  slightly  analogous  to  that  of  the  galley- 
slave  released.  For  the  loyalty  and  service  de 
manded  of  residents  are  deep  and  searching. 
The  march  of  improvement  must  be  partici 
pated  in  by  one  and  all,  and  there  is  no  light 
est  aspect  of  life  too  trivial  to  have  importance. 

One  poor-spirited  fellow  who  has  moved  to 
New  York  explains,  almost  paradoxically, 
what  for  him  are  the  possibilities  of  pleasure 
in  the  Eastern  metropolis. 

"If,"  he  says,  "I  want  to  spend  a  quiet  even 
ing  at  home,  perhaps  with  a  good  book,  I  know 
that  the  tables  in  the  restaurants  are  all  en 
gaged,  that  the  theaters  will  be  crowded,  the 
Broadway  sidewalks  thronged,  and  that  in 
a  thousand  supper-places  youth  and  pleasure 
will  chase  the  glowing  hours  till  dawn. 
Everything  is  going  at  top  speed,  and  in  any 
case  no  one  would  think  it  my  fault  if  it 
weren't.  In  New  York  I  can  stay  at  home  in 


The  Windy  City  on  a  windy  day. 


The  Portrait  of  Chicago  85 

peace.  In  Chicago  I  should  have  an  uneasy 
sense  that  somehow,  somewhere,  I  ought  to 
be  actively  completing  that  evening's  triumph 
ant  Chicago  picture." 

There  is  always  a  hint  of  treachery  in  this 
moving  away.  A  really  high-minded  Chica- 
goan  transfers  his  residence  only  after  fasting 
and  prayer  and  taking  counsel  of  his  most 
earnest  friends.  Ideally  he  should  be  con 
vinced,  first,  that  he  will  return;  and,  second, 
that  from  the  more  effete  Washington,  Eu 
rope,  or  New  York  he  can  bring  back  loot  to 
adorn  Chicago,  as  a  Roman  might  have 
fetched  home  the  spoils  of  Antioch  and  Athens 
to  enrich  the  seven  hills.  Neither  at  home  nor 
abroad  can  the  Chicagoan  escape  the  convic 
tion  of  what  he  is. 

Chicago  is,  in  a  sense  which  should  now  be 
comprehensible,  the  most  self-conscious  great 
city  of  the  world.  The  word  is  used  accu 
rately;  self -consciousness  does  not  necessarily 
include  either  over-sensitiveness  or  conceit. 
The  great  Western  town  knows,  better  than 
any  outsiders  can,  its  merits  and  its  faults. 

For  a  long  time  Chicago  existed  in  a  kind 
of  wilderness.  Before  the  World's  Fair  of 
some  quarter  of  a  century  ago  it  was  a  kind 
of  terra  incognita.  Even  now  visitors,  espe 
cially  those  from  abroad,  are  guilty  of  an  in 
credible  vagueness  about  even  the  town's  geog- 


86          American  Towns  and  People 

raphy.  There  is  a  story  about  some  strangers 
entertained  at  a  well-known  club  who  asked 
where  the  lake  was  of  which  they  heard  peo 
ple  speak,  and  when,  from  the  very  windows 
of  the  room  where  they  sat  its  blue  expanse 
was  pointed  out,  expressed  surprise,  since  they 
had  supposed  that  was  the  Pacific  Ocean!  It 
is  not  long  ago  that  an  intelligent  Philadelphia 
lady  spoke  of  a  friend  who  was  "going  out" 
to  Chicago  to  live,  much  as  an  early-nine 
teenth-century  Londoner  might  have  spoken 
of  any  one  who  was  settling  in  New  Guinea. 
For  a  long  time  the  East  thought  of  Chicago 
with  ignorant,  wondering  amazement,  recog 
nized  it  economically,  but  not  socially. 

This  was  the  period  of  legends  which  told 
of  the  big  feet  of  Chicago  girls  and  of  the 
universality  of  divorce  there.  It  was  the  time 
—not  altogether  past — of  English  novels 
which  introduced  Silas  P.  Guigg,  a  pork- 
packer,  and  his  vulgar  and  pushing  family. 
The  facts  are  that  the  Chicagoans  of  that  day 
were,  many  of  them,  really  engaged  in  build 
ing  houses  designed  by  Richardson,  entertain 
ing  Matthew  Arnold,  and  collecting  libraries 
of  first  editions,  and  that  then,  as  now,  few, 
if  any  of  them,  had  ever  seen  the  stock-yards. 
But  it  availed  them  nothing  in  the  outer 
world.  There  is  an  apocryphal  story  of  Eu 
gene  Field  meeting  in  London  a  distinguished 


The  Portrait  of  Chicago  87 

female  novelist  who  was  wide-eyed  with  won 
dering  amazement  at  learning  of  his  usual 
habitat,  and  inquired  gravely  into  his  origins. 

"Well,  madam,"  he  is  said  to  have  answered, 
"when  I  was  caught  I  was  living  in  a  tree!" 

The  inhabitants  of  the  regions  east  of  the 
Alleghanies  can  scarcely  have  at  any  period 
imagined  that  Chicagoans  were  actually 
swinging  by  their  tails  in  jungles  bordering 
Lake  Michigan,  but  they  did  view  people 
from  those  shores  with  great  distrust.  Ladies 
of  that  town,  escaping  to  the  fuller,  richer 
life  of  London  or  New  York,  sometimes  de 
nied  their  origin,  and  even  transformed  them 
selves  into  Virginians,  always  a  popular 
though  partly  unconvincing  method  of  claim 
ing  aristocracy  of  birth  in  America. 

It  would  be  the  grossest  exaggeration  to  de 
scribe  these  early  Chicagoans  as  outcasts  in 
the  land,  yet  there  is  just  enough  of  truth  in 
the  statement  to  make  it  understandable  how 
the  town  was  knit  together  and  how  civic 
enthusiasm  and  pride  were  the  answer  to  the 
challenge  of  an  effete  and  doubting  world. 
It  must  always  be  remembered  that  even  in 
this  Mid-Western  country  Chicago  is  new — 
when  it  was  a  mere  frontier  post  both  Cincin 
nati  and  St.  Louis  had  old-established  fami 
lies  and  hereditary  wealth. 

Of  course  Chicago  did  not  even  begin  quite 


88          American  Towns  and  People 

in  the  style  of  the  stone  age.  Many  of  those 
early  settlers  packed  in  their  baggage  the  best 
traditions  and  the  finest  culture  of  the  East — 
the  last  survivor  of  the  Boston  Tea  Party  died 
in  Chicago  in  '52.  But  in  the  building  of  the 
new  metropolis  the  more  elegant  immigrants 
worked  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  many 
rougher-hewn  pioneers.  And  there  is  a  queer, 
almost  pathetic,  kind  of  comedy  in  the  memo 
ries  of  the  attempts  of  the  one  sort  gently  and 
fraternally  to  civilize  the  other.  A  book  giv 
ing  the  history  of  the  most  aristocratic  of  Chi 
cago's  clubs  records  gravely  and  sweetly  how 
many  of  the  first  members  had  to  be  taught 
what  a  club  was  and  how  a  gentleman  used 
one.  And  it  is  true  that  the  reactions  of  the 
raw  kind  of  Chicagoan  to  the  more  finished 
civilizations  of  the  world  were  often  notable. 
There  is  a  singularly  pleasant  story  of  two 
young  gentlemen — of  the  second  generation — 
who  were  bicycling  in  Italy.  One  day  they 
passed  through  a  fairly  large  town.  They 
were  for  the  moment  engrossed  in  baseball 
talk;  still  at  the  gate  at  the  farther  end  of 
the  city  one  of  them  paused. 

"Don't  you  think,"  he  said,  "we  ought  to 
find  out  what  place  this  is?" 

They  asked  and  discovered  that  it  was  Flor 
ence.  Contented  with  the  information,  they 
rode  on  and  resumed  their  talk! 


The  Portrait  of  Chicago  89 

So  much  for  the  immunity  from  impression. 
Of  course  more  sensitive  souls  there  were,  too. 
The  famous  lady,  for  example,  who,  after  a 
single  trip  abroad,  opened  the  gates  of  her 
country  place  on  a  Wisconsin  lake  so  that  of 
a  Saturday  night  "the  peasants  ( !)  might  come 
in  and  from  the  lawn  listen  to  the  music  in  the 
drawing-room." 

All  this  is  broad  comedy,  and  nothing  to  be 
especially  ashamed  of.  There  is  sometimes 
now  to  be  discovered  in  the  new  Middle  West 
an  almost  snobbish  tendency  to  forget  the  past 
and  to  pretend  that  there  never  was  a  time 
when  lettuce  salad  was  dressed  with  vinegar 
and  sugar.  A  Middle-Westerner  not  yet  de 
crepit  seizes  this  opportunity  to  confess  that 
he  can  perfectly  remember  the  year  when 
olive-oil  crossed  the  Alleghanies,  and  that  he 
believes  the  earlier  sour-sweet  dish  had  a  racy 
flavor  of  the  very  ante-bellum  Americanism 
which  reclaimed  all  that  northwestern  wilder 
ness. 

Chicago  is,  in  Bacon's  phrase,  "young  in 
years,  old  in  hours."  It  is  almost  literally  a 
creation  of  yesterday.  A  little  group  of  Chi- 
cagoan  residents  of  New  York  dining  together 
termed  themselves  jocosely  "survivors  of  the 
Fort  Dearborn  massacre,"  and  really  might 
almost  have  been.  The  incredible  speed  with 
which  things  have  had  to  be  accomplished 


90          American   Towns  and  People 

sometimes  makes  in  only  two  generations  of  a 
Chicago  family  the  traditional  complete  his 
tory  from  the  rude  pioneer  American  ancestor 
to  the  over-cultivated  Europeanized  descend 
ant.  It  is  just  the  violence  of  such  transitions 
which  accounts  for  much  of  the  town's  special 
flavor,  for  that  note  of  vigor,  of  competence, 
of  achievement,  which  made  a  Washington- 
ian  once  assert  that  in  the  wilds  of  Africa  she 
would  be  able  to  tell  a  Chicago  woman  by  the 
mere  firm  hand-clasp. 

The  years  count  for  so  much  by  Lake 
Michigan  that  the  most  preposterous  effect  of 
age  can  be  produced  almost  while  you  wait. 
The  old  residential  streets  from  which  fashion 
has  ebbed  have  already  a  quaintness  which 
will  soon  be  comparable  to  that  of  Beacon 
Hill,  and  in  the  regions  where  the  early  Chi- 
cagoans  built  their  summer  cottages  (before 
the  North  Shore  of  Massachusetts  was  thought 
of)  there  are  delicious  examples  of  nineteenth- 
century  domestic  architecture  which  will  be 
invaluable  when  the  history  of  art  in  that  pe 
riod  comes  to  be  written. 

As  for  old  families,  nowhere  in  America  is 
laudator  temporis  actl  as  loud  in  regrets  as  in 
our  youngest  great  city  at  the  passing  of  an 
earlier  aristocracy  and  the  social  swamping  of 
the  town  by  new  people.  And  though  this 
sounds  absurd,  it  is  not  in  the  least  absurd;  the 


The  Portrait  of  Chicago  91 

odd  compression  of  Chicago  makes  the  settlers 
of  the  '6o's  seem  as  if  they  might  have  come  in 
the  '6o's  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

The  contrasts  resulting  from  the  town's 
fabulously  quick  growth  are  often  startling 
and  picturesque.  The  uncertainty  of  actual 
personal  safety  was  formerly,  for  the  alien  ob 
server,  one  of  the  most  pleasing  features  of 
the  picture.  Only  a  decade  or  so  ago  bandits 
used  to  seize  especially  promising  home-goers 
at  six  in  the  evening  in  the  crowded  and  well- 
lit  North  Clark  Street  and,  dragging  their  vic 
tims  through  the  dark  and  lonely  side  streets 
to  the  Lake  Shore  Drive,  there  rob  at  their 
leisure.  And  the  mining-camp  aspect  of  the 
great  city  was  luridly  obvious  near  the  sin 
ister  Rush  Street  Bridge,  where  all  through 
the  night  ladies  wearing  upon  their  lovely  per 
sons  the  traditional  king's  ransom  in  jewels 
sped  in  luxurious  carriages  over  a  thorough 
fare  upon  which  no  solitary  nocturnal  pedes 
trian  dared  venture.  But  sandbagging  and 
footpads'  work  have  declined  with  the  years, 
so  Chicagoans  to-day  assure  the  simple  and 
trusting  stranger. 

There  is  some  desolate  made  land  by  the 
lake,  for  a  long  time  unbuilt  upon,  the  abode 
of  a  squatter  who  claimed  title  to  it  and  de 
fied  all  the  ordinary  processes  of  law  and  vio 
lence  to  evict  him.  Near  by  his  hut  is  the 


92          American   Towns  and  People 

"Casino,"  briefly  to  be  described  as  a  sort  of 
country  club  in  town,  which  is  of  an  advanced 
elegance  and  style  and  beauty  which  make 
it  quite  the  "smartest"  thing  in  America.  And 
it  is  quite  possible  that  sometimes  the  air  out 
side  might  be  pierced  by  the  memories  of  un 
availing  cries  of  the  rude  and  untutored  sand- 
baggers'  prey  while  in  the  Casino's  polished 
lovely  rooms  dozens  of  able-bodied  Chicago 
young  men  are  whipped  in  by  public-spirited 
women  to  drink  tea  in  a  fashion  that  makes 
their  town  honorably  compare  with  Paris  or 
London  in  idle,  ante-bellum  days. 

Tea-drinking  is  indeed  trivial,  but  nothing 
is  too  trivial  for  attention  if  it  can  perfect 
Chicago.  In  the  old  days  when  Anglomania 
was  fashionable  in  America  a  Chicago  hos 
tess — a  Presbyterian,  too — was  deeply  dis 
tressed  if  men  did  not  accept  the  whisky  and 
soda,  and  ladies  the  cigarettes,  which  ad 
vices  from  London  assured  her  were  offered  at 
tea-time  in  that  capital.  And  a  rumor  that 
young  noblemen  staying  in  English  country 
houses  required  a  refreshing  glass  of  kummel 
frappe  sent  to  their  rooms  before  breakfast 
would  have  been  seriously  investigated  from 
this  lady's  establishment  in  Lake  Forest. 

All  this  is  not  particularly  from  any  slavish 
wish  to  copy  the  modes  of  other  towns.  It 
is  more  in  the  nature  of  a  guarantee  of  good 


The  Portrait  of  Chicago  93 

faith,  an  evidence  that  even  if  it  is  painful 
to  be  fashionable,  if  it  be  for  the  good  of  Chi 
cago  devoted  creatures  stand  ready  to  be  fash 
ionable.  Or  fashionable  and  artistic  com 
bined!  The  early  days  of  opera,  in  every 
American  city  which  has  attempted  it,  have 
always  been  marked  by  the  martyrdom  of  the 
American  music-hating  male.  New  York 
went  through  such  a  period,  emerging  at  last 
with  an  institution  incredibly  popular  but  no 
longer  violently  fashionable.  And  Chicago 
has  seen  the  light.  It  gave  itself  lately  one 
winter's  respite — a  winter  marked,  so  local  ob 
servers  asserted,  by  unusual  social  high  spirits. 
But  it  has  again  taken  up  its  operatic  cross  and, 
to  its  astonishment,  finds  it  very  light.  In  the 
fertile  Chicago  soil  musical  taste  grows 
quickly. 

The  early  days  of  the  Chicago  Orchestra 
were  marked  by  the  same  support  given  by  all 
the  social  machinery  to  a  civic  and  artistic  en 
terprise.  There  was  even  a  brave  pretense 
that  it  was  a  gay,  smart  thing  to  dine  Saturday 
night  and  to  go  on  to  a  Brahms  symphony. 
Now  the  Orchestra  is  genuinely  liked,  and 
larkish  society  people  are  free  to  dine  at  eight 
and  arrive  at  a  musical  comedy  at  half-past 
nine  if  they  like,  just  as  they  do  in  New  York. 

There  is  no  telling  what  such  a  deeply 
American  community  as  Chicago  will  accom- 


94          American   Towns  and  People 

plish,  once  it  puts  its  mind  to  it.  Upon  the 
stage  the  speech  of  Chicagoans  is  made  to  rasp 
like  a  buzz-saw.  But  an  Englishman  visiting 
this  country  some  years  ago  reported  on  his 
return  that  the  American  accent  softest  and 
pleasantest  to  his  ear  he  had  heard  in  Chicago. 
If  he  was  right  it  is  because  the  natural  Mid- 
Western  accent  would  have  been  the  least 
pleasant  and  that  Chicago  had  in  consequence 
gone  to  the  greatest  pains  to  correct  it. 

Chicago,  indeed,  gives  the  lie  to  almost  all 
the  traditions  concerning  it.  It  is,  for  ex 
ample — if  one  could  trust  people  who  have 
never  been  there — the  most  material  of  our 
towns.  But,  oddly  enough,  it  is  really  not  with 
material  development  that  the  student  of  Chi 
cago  should  concern  himself,  for — paradoxi 
cal  though  it  may  sound — Chicago  competes 
with  Boston  for  the  position  of  the  least  ma 
terial  of  our  cities. 

First  of  all,  Chicago  is  not,  as  things  go  in 
America,  a  rich  town.  It  is  not  poor,  but  it 
lacks  the  huge  money  accumulations  of  New 
York,  and  the  average  prominent  citizen  is 
not  hopelessly  struggling  to  discover  some  way 
of  spending  his  income.  The  great  fortunes 
of  Chicago  are,  on  the  whole,  of  mercantile 
and  manufacturing  origin  rather  than  of  the 
haute  finance,  and  the  resultant  tone  is  one 
of  sobriety,  almost  frugality.  Chicago  wealth 


The  Portrait  of  Chicago  95 

is — contrary  to  all  accepted  tradition — not  os 
tentatious.  In  the  earlier,  more  tumultuous 
days  when  the  city  was  the  farthest  point  east 
touched  by  a  wild  and  woolly  West  and 
Southwest,  they  set  silver  dollars  in  the  tessel 
lated  pavement  of  the  Palmer  House  barber 
shop,  and  the  legend  went  forth  of  an  unbri 
dled  vulgarity.  Meanwhile  in  fact  the  whole 
structure  of  public  foundations  and  charities 
was  being  built  up  with  amazing  swiftness  by 
the  prompt  generosity  and  public  spirit  of 
two — at  the  most,  three — generations.  The 
open  purse  for  civic  needs  genuinely  acted  to 
maintain  a  certain  modesty  in  the  standards 
of  private  living  which  still  persists.  Money 
is  not  despised  there,  but  if  you  must  be  poor, 
Chicago  is  not  a  bad  place  to  try  it  in. 

It  is  not  a  bad  place  to  try  to  be  democratic 
in.  Society  there  is,  of  course,  elegant  and 
fashionable,  and  to  all  intents  and  purposes 
exactly  like  any  other  American  society  in  its 
habits  and  customs.  And  yet,  on  the  whole, 
one  might  venture  to  say  that  it  leans  rather 
on  the  side  of  unpretentiousness  and  well-bred 
accessibility.  It  might  be  taken  in  evidence 
that  a  daily  newspaper  recently  put  up  plac 
ards  in  all  the  street-cars  with  this  urgent  ap 
peal  to  even  the  humble  strap-hanger,  "Watch 
for  your  name  in  our  new  department  of  so 
ciety  news"! 


96          American   Towns  and  People 

Chicago,  perhaps  just  because  it  knows  that 
the  world  is  likely  to  accuse  it  of  the  contrary, 
is,  if  anything,  almost  unduly  anxious  to  be 
modest,  quiet,  and  well-bred.  In  the  summer 
it  avoids  Newport  and  places  too  tainted  with 
the  famous  vulgarity  of  New  York,  and  on 
the  shores  of  New  Engand  claims  a  natural 
affinity  with  Boston's  quieter  civilization  and 
frugal  culture.  Indeed  it  is  no  little  mock 
New  York,  but  rather,  if  one  may  risk  the 
comparison,  a  great,  unshackled,  rough  and 
lively  Boston  of  the  West,  with  all  the  vitality 
and  the  sharp  indigenous  quality  which  were 
once  the  especial  possession  of  the  New  Eng 
land  capital.  Strange  religions  and  new  phi 
losophies  now  spring  from  the  prairie  more 
lustily  than  ever  from  Beacon  Hill.  Even 
poesy  has  gone  westward,  and  all  Illinois  is 
nowr  a  nest  of  singing-birds. 

Nowhere  can  the  persistent  efficiency  of 
the  Western  metropolis  be  more  plainly  seen 
and  more  agreeably  studied  than  in  this  mat 
ter  of  art.  It  was  somewhere  along  in  the 
'8o's  of  the  last  century  that  the  now  classic 
prophecy  was  uttered  that,  "when  she  got 
ready,  Chicago  would  make  culture  hum." 
Culture  is  now  being  made  to  hum  there  as 
nowhere  else  in  the  world.  The  gathering  of 
students  at  the  Art  Institute  is  something  ma 
jestic  and  unparalleled;  never  in  the  world 


The  Portrait  of  Chicago  97 

have  so  many  eager  pilgrims  simultaneously 
approached  the  shrines  of  painting  and  sculp 
ture.  If  numbers  are  to  count,  Chicago  is 
already  the  art  center  of  the  world.  It  is  too 
early  to  judge  by  results  whether  this  great 
Mid-Western  country — of  which  Chicago  is 
consciously  and  proudly  the  capital — is  as 
fertile  a  soil  for  art  as  it  is  for  corn.  Time 
will  tell ;  genius  shows  itself  where  God  wills, 
whether  it  be  in  Iowa  or  in  France.  Mean 
while  an  intensive  culture  of  these  prairie 
fields  is  being  practiced.  Not  only  are  the 
students  lusty  and  eager,  as  befits  their  origin, 
but  the  outside  public  of  mere  appreciators 
strains,  as  it  were,  at  the  leash.  It  is  possible 
in  Chicago,  and  in  Chicago  only,  for  a  gay, 
fashionable  party  of  young  people,  after 
lunching  at  a  smart  restaurant,  to  adjourn  to 
the  Institute,  where  the  thoughtful  host  has 
engaged  a  lecturer  to  give  them  a  little  talk 
on  the  pictures  there  displayed! 

There  is,  indeed,  in  Chicago  an  efficiency  in 
dealing  with  art  so  hard  and  bright  as  almost 
to  terrify  easier-going  people  from  slacker 
communities.  Art  clubs,  art  associations,  art- 
display  rooms,  art  theaters,  art  tea-rooms,  and 
so  forth  are  wisely  concentrated  in  certain  ad 
mirable  buildings  where  all  the  advantages  of 
elevators,  central  heating,  and  general  tele 
phonic  service  are  to  be  secured.  The  Chi- 


98          American   Towns  and  People 

cago  Little  Theater  was  a  peculiarly  striking 
example  of  the  Chicago  way  of  dealing  with 
budding  art.  In  New  York  such  a  tentative 
enterprise  would  probably  be  housed  in  a 
transformed  studio  or  a  disused  and  forgotten 
playhouse  or  a  rebuilt  old  mansion  in  the 
slums.  In  Chicago  it  existed  on  the  twelfth 
or  twentieth  floor  of  a  clean,  sanitary,  and  ex 
pensive  building,  where  art  seemed  to  shed  any 
bedraggled  bohemian  quality  it  may  have  in 
older  civilizations.  Here  in  a  thoroughly  dis 
infected  air  you  might,  for  example,  see  a  play 
of  medieval  monkish  life  written  by  a  young 
girl  from  Michigan  and  played  by  Wisconsin 
artists.  Again  culture  must  tremble  like  a 
hunted  fox  in  the  thickets,  for  quite  probably 
both  play  and  players  will  be  excellent. 

Art  is  indeed  domesticated  among  Chica- 
goans — they  are  scarcely  afraid  of  it  at  all.  It 
has  seemed  quite  natural  that  in  one  of  the 
drinking-rooms  of  the  University  Club  there 
should  be  decorative  and  satirical  frescoes  by 
members  of  the  club,  who  are  valued  because 
they  are  artists,  not  merely  tolerated  as  they 
might  be  in  more  effete  but  supposedly  more 
artistic  regions. 

Chicago's  attitude  to  the  drama  is  interest 
ing,  significant,  and  full  of  promise.  And 
here  reference  is  not  primarily  to  the  en 
dowed  or  the  avowedly  "artistic"  theater,  but 


The  Portrait  of  Chicago  99 

to  the  commercial  institution,  which  of  neces 
sity  is  still  freighted  with  the  greater  cargo 
of  dramatic  hopes.  Chicago  is  the  only  great 
town  outside  New  York  which  can  reasonably 
claim  independence  of  the  judgments  of  the 
Eastern  metropolis.  Success  in  New  York  is 
no  guarantee  of  success  in  Chicago,  and  fail 
ure  on  Broadway  may  even  be  a  recommenda 
tion  near  Michigan  Boulevard.  Chicago  is 
our  second — with  the  possible  exception  of  the 
Pacific  coast  cities — our  only  other  "produc 
ing  center" ;  plays  first  shown  there  may  win 
a  profitable  local  patronage  and  travel  to  ad 
vantage  on  the  Chicago  reputation  through 
a  wide  district  of  rich  tributary  province. 
The  advantage  to  the  American  theater  of 
having  a  second  string  to  its  bow  is  incalcula 
ble.  Indeed,  no  one  can  really  think  it  other 
than  advantageous  for  American  civilization 
that  Chicago  should  think  itself  and  be  a  real 
capital,  an  independent  metropolis. 

There  are,  even  from  the  Chicagoan  point 
of  view,  blemishes  on  the  reverse  of  the  medal 
of  victory;  the  gallant  struggle  for  independ 
ence  and  perfection  is  not  yet  over.  The 
prizes  which  the  East  can  offer  to  talent  and 
ambition  are  often  richer  than  those  within 
Chicago's  power,  and  there  is  a  constant  small 
drain  of  its  resources  in  the  migration  of  men 
and  women  to  the  Eastern  seaboard.  But  this 


IOO        American  Towns  and  People 

is  in  the  end  more  than  balanced  by  the  con 
stant  immigration,  from  the  East  and  from 
the  prairie  country,  of  the  young  and  ambi 
tious.  Chicago  is  for  them  still  a  land  of  op 
portunity,  democratic  enough  to  have  chances 
still  open  for  all,  American  enough  to  have 
faith  that  all  the  chances  are  winning  ones. 
Even  those  who  desert  have  gained  something 
from  contact  with  the  boundless  vigor  of  the 
giant  city.  Every  American  ought  to  live — 
at  least  for  a  little  while — in  Chicago. 


Washington,  the  Cosmopolitan 

ANY  one  trying  to  catch  and  write  down 
the  individual  quality  of  towns  and 
cities  is  forever  being  delighted  and  surprised 
at  the  way  in  which  the  look  of  buildings, 
streets,  and  gardens  betrays  the  character  of 
places  and  their  inhabitants.  If  some  lonely 
stranger  were  to  visit  the  capital  of  these 
United  States  and  leave  it,  having  talked  with 
no  one,  he  would,  for  all  that,  carry  away 
shining  memories  of  almost  all  that  was 
needed  for  the  understanding  of  Washington. 
He  would  first  of  all  remember  that  upon  a 
hill  at  one  end  of  the  town  the  Capitol,  the 
most  beautiful  building  in  America,  lies  like 
a  fair  white  cloud.  At  the  other  end  of  a 
great  avenue,  he  would  have  gone  by  the 
President's  House  sitting  upon  a  green  lawn. 
From  a  small,  smooth  knoll  among  leafy 
groves  near  the  broad  river  he  would  have 
seen  a  gleaming  white  shaft  incredibly  pierce 
the  blue  of  a  soft,  Southern  sky.  And  he 
would  know  that  the  business  of  governing 

the  country  is  the  only  one  going  on  in  Wasrj- 

101 


IO2        American   Towns  and  People 

ington;  and  that  politics  is,  always  has  been, 
and  always  will  be  the  town's  one  great  pre 
occupation. 

As  Petrograd  rose  as  if  by  magic  from  the 
marshes  of  the  Neva,  so  did  Washington, 
something  over  a  century  ago,  from  the  lovely 
wooded  hills  along  the  Potomac.  The  capital 
grew  more  slowly.  The  stories  are  well  known 
of  Mrs.  Adams's  domestic  difficulties  at  the 
White  House.  Outside  the  President's  Pal 
ace,  things  were  worse  in  a  city  which  a 
visiting  Frenchman  wittily  described  as  con 
sisting  of  streets  without  houses  and  houses 
without  streets.  The  early  memoirs  are 
largely  concerned  with  carriages,  freighted 
with  elegant  females,  stuck  in  the  main  ave 
nues  in  mud  which  rose  to  the  very  hubs  of 
their  wheels.  Things  are  better  now.  Wash 
ington  has  grown  to  be  populous  and  well 
equipped.  But  it  is  still  unspotted  by  indus 
try;  it  requires  the  active,  blundering  efforts 
of  the  government  itself — as  lately — to  build 
chimneys  big  enough  to  stain  its  clear,  South 
ern  sky.  It  has  no  trade  and  no  manufactures. 
Rome  is  the  only  other  uncommercial  great 
capital  in  the  world;  and  even  in  Rome  there 
has  been  for  years  a  persistent,  though  unau- 
thenticated,  story  of  the  existence  there  of  a 
corn-starch  factory.  Washington  is  the  resi 
dence  of  political  America  and  nothing  more. 


Washington,  the  Cosmopolitan        103 

If  you  withdrew  the  government  of  the  U.  S. 
A.,  it  would  at  once  vanish  into  thin  air  like 
an  enchanted  city  in  an  Arabian  tale. 

Just  as  in  New  York  they  talk  Wall  Street, 
in  Philadelphia  family,  and  in  Boston  books, 
so  in  Washington  they  talk  politics.  That, 
outside  the  national  capital,  we  do  not  gen 
erally  discuss  our  national  affairs  is  one  of  our 
American  faults.  It  is  the  constant  reproach 
of  visiting  foreigners,  who  in  their  own  best 
society  always  find  the  men  engaged  in  run 
ning  the  country.  It  is  some  such  recognition 
of  its  own  incompleteness  which  is  behind 
New  York's  deep  conviction  that  Washington 
ought  to  be  in  New  York  rather  than  in  the 
District  of  Columbia.  It  is  just  this  social 
lack  at  home  which  drives  so  many  of  even  the 
silliest  New-Yorkers  to  make  flying  trips  to 
the  Potomac.  Perhaps  they  do  not  quite 
know  it,  but  they  go  there  to  hear  political  talk 
and  to  see  the  American  horizon  widen  till  the 
Mississippi  Valley  and  the  Western  moun 
tains  and  the  sunset  over  the  Pacific  come  into 
view. 

The  non-Washingtonian  must  record  his 
gratitude  that  Washingtonians  talk  politics, 
even  if  they  often  talk  stupidly  and  frivo 
lously.  The  great  dome  of  the  Capitol  is 
dimly  seen  in  the  background  of  every  Wash- 
ingtonian  picture.  Gentlemen  spitting  in  the 


IO4        American  Towns  and  People 

lobbies  of  the  cheaper  hotels,  and  lovely  ladies 
serving  tea  to  foreign  counts  in  Louis  XVI. 
drawing-rooms,  all  talk  the  gossip  of  govern 
ment.  It  is  not  too  fantastic  even  to  imagine 
that  some  sweet,  underclad  little  debutante 
might  in  the  intervals  of  the  dance  softly  mur 
mur  some  secret  of  the  last  Cabinet  meeting, 
No  one  in  Washington  is  so  obscure  as  not  to 
have  some  "inside  information."  No  one  but 
has  some  connection  with  the  government,  has 
had,  or  hopes  to  have  some  such  connection. 
The  ebbing  political  tides  leave  very  agree 
able  people  on  the  Washingtonian  rocks  who 
linger  on  in  idleness.  Dolly  Madison  had  a 
house  for  years  just  across  the  green  from  the 
greater  residence  where  she  had  held  her  gay 
court;  it  is  a  pleasant  example  which  might 
well  be  followed.  Widows  there  are,  and  re 
tired  generals  and  admirals.  Old  gentlemen, 
too,  who  have  been  in  the  Senate  and  the 
Cabinet — too  enfeebled  for  active  political 
service,  but  quite  strong  enough  to  heave  a 
stone  at  the  White  House  whenever  the  fancy 
takes  them.  Such  people  are  immensely  ser 
viceable  in  such  a  community.  But  for  them, 
Washington  would  be  merely  a  transient  hotel, 
with  a  great  part  of  the  population  evicted 
every  four  years.  New  Congressmen  and 
others  come  to  the  capital  as  fresh  as  paint,  and 
fortunately  find  there  these  retired  sages  who 


Washington,  the  Cosmopolitan        105 

can  school  them  in  the  ancient  Washington 
tradition.  Nothing  in  America  is  pleasanter 
than  such  an  unofficial  drawing-room,  where, 
as  dusk  settles  on  the  town  and  the  palaces  of 
the  government,  callers  drop  in  with  lightly 
given  but  authentic  information  as  to  how 
America  stands  that  day  in  the  world.  There 
are  agreeably  embittered  old  ladies,  too,  who 
have  watched  statesmen  come  and  go  like  the 
grass  that  is  cut  down.  And  belles  through 
many  administrations  who  confront  life  no 
more  gayly  on  present-day  terrapin  and  cham 
pagne  than  in  old  times  on  chicken-salad  and 
ice-cream  and  coffee.  Pleasant  survivals  of 
an  earlier  time — trained,  all  of  them,  to  talk 
politics  and  to  gossip. 

Gossip,  indeed — about  serious  matters  and 
about  matters  of  no  importance  whatever — 
forms  the  background  of  the  Washington  pic 
ture.  The  town  is  already  in  what  may  be 
called  its  anecdotage.  Washington,  just  by 
virtue  of  being  uncommercial,  is  a  personal 
town.  Never  anywhere  in  the  world  were 
there  so  many  stories  about  people.  They  are 
told  to-day  in  pleasant,  leisure  hours;  they 
have  been  set  down  in  many  volumes  of  mem 
oirs  and  in  the  innumerable  records  of  the 
hordes  of  newspaper  correspondents  who  have 
from  the  beginning  fattened  upon  the  capital. 
The  stories  are  not  always  very  important,  not 


106        American  Towns  and  People 

always  particularly  significant.  Still  it  is 
agreeable,  for  example,  to  know  that  a  female 
journalist  of  an  early  day  secured  an  interview 
with  President  John  Quincy  Adams  while  that 
august  personage  was  bathing  in  the  Potomac, 
as  was  his  custom,  from  the  foot  of  the  White 
House  grounds,  by  the  usual  expedient  of  re 
moving  his  clothes,  and  thus  keeping  him  in 
the  water  till  he  had  answered  her  questions. 
It  is  also  a  pleasant  minor  fact  that  our  once  so 
popular  song,  "Listen  to  the  Mocking-Bird," 
was  first  heard  at  a  White  House  concert  given 
in  honor  of  the  Prince  of  Wales.  And  it  is 
piquant  to  learn  of  an  early  foreign  ambassa 
dor  who  was  accustomed  to  beat  his  wife  to 
the  accompaniment  of  a  'cello  played  by  his 
first  secretary  for  the  purpose  of  drowning  her 
screams.  Washington  has  a  mellow  past. 

Before  tackling  the  majestic  spectacle  of  the 
town's  present,  a  word  may  be  spared  for  the 
future.  Not,  perhaps,  so  much  for  the  future 
as  for  the  people  of  all  kinds  who  come  there 
with  an  eye  upon  that  period — whose  connec 
tion  with  the  government  is  that  of  hope  de 
ferred.  Office-seeking  has,  through  civil-ser 
vice  reform,  lost  something  of  its  picturesque 
resemblance  to  the  locusts  invading  Egypt. 
But  the  axes  to  grind  which  are  unpacked  in 
hotel  bedrooms  are  still  numerous.  There  are 
the  usual  conventional  lobbyists  seeking  to 


Washington,  the  Cosmopolitan        107 

dredge  Mud  Creek  or  to  build  a  hundred- 
thousand-dollar  post-office  for  Bird  Center. 
You  can  tell  them  in  the  hotel  offices  by  a  cer 
tain  lean  and  hungry  eagerness,  and  by  a  sort 
of  Washington  costume  which  they  wear — it  is 
not  the  statesman's  traditional  black  broad 
cloth,  and  yet  it  somehow  manages  to  look  as 
if  it  were.  Then  there  are,  besides,  odd 
claimants  and  queer  pretenders.  There  are 
tired  old  ladies  in  rusty  black  bonnets  who, 
perhaps,  hope  still  to  be  rich  from  the  French 
Spoliation  Claims,  or  look  forward  to  induc 
ing  Congress  to  pension  the  third  cousins  of 
descendants  of  those  who  fought  in  the  Mexi 
can  War.  Inventors,  too,  are  to  be  found, 
some  on  the  very  highroad  to  prosperity  via 
the  Patent  Office,  others  destined  to  linger  on 
for  dreary  years,  pursuing  the  will-o'-the-wisp 
of  some  fantastic  good  fortune.  In  one  little 
boarding-house  in  a  seedy  side-street  half-way 
toward  the  Capitol  there  lately  lived  no  less 
than  three  inventors  of  perpetual  motion! — a 
situation  reminiscent  of  a  London  legend  of 
the  jubilee  of  Queen  Victoria,  when,  in  a 
squalid  Bloomsbury  lodging-house,  four  em 
presses,  if  they  had  their  rights,  once  took  tea 
together.  "Cranks,"  as  we  call  them,  wander 
vaguely  to  and  fro  in  all  the  shadows  of  the 
Washingtonian  picture,  like  harmless,  amiable 
ghosts,  for  the  most  part — half  comic,  half 


io8        American  Towns  and  People 

tragic.  Sometimes,  however,  the  "crank's" 
eye  is  lit  with  some  smoldering  hate — already 
in  the  Washingtonian  annals  his  murderous 
bullet  has  put  the  nation  in  mourning — the 
clouds  along  the  murky  horizon  are  lit  oc 
casionally  with  lightning.  This  queer,  ob 
scure  world,  this  mere  penumbra  of  the  gov 
ernment,  is  always  present  to  the  imaginative 
observer.  But  it  must  no  longer  delay  con 
templation  of  the  great,  clearly  lime-lit, 
official  world  of  those  who  are  the  vessels  of 
to-day's  governmental  power  and  glory.  This 
is  a  Washington  composed  and  recomposed  al 
most  every  four  years  at  the  will  of  the  people. 
These  are  the  Washingtonians  who  have  been 
defined  by  one  old  gentleman  as  merely  the 
Americans  who  are  not  wanted  at  home.  But 
such  tart  comments  are  negligible.  This  is 
the  real  Washington. 

The  White  House  is  far  and  away  the  most 
desirable  residence  to  let  at  the  national  cap 
ital.  (This  in  spite  of  the  nobility  of  Vice- 
Presidents,  which  of  course  obliges  them  to 
the  generous  tradition  of  Fillmore,  who  said, 
when  he  was  called  to  the  Executive  Man 
sion,  "This  is  my  first  misfortune.")  It  is  the 
most  personal,  most  picturesque  of  the  gov 
ernment's  possessions.  Its  history  is  the  his 
tory  of  many  of  our  American  ideals, 

In  the  early  days  of  the  Virginian  dynasty 


Washington,  the  Cosmopolitan        109 

of  Presidents  there  were  "levees"  and  "draw 
ing-rooms"  at  the  White  House,  and  it  shel 
tered  something  very  like  a  court.  The  court 
ideal  dies  hard.  Even  now  the  red-velvet 
rope,  which  in  more  effete  civilization  sep 
arates  the  social  sheep  from  the  goats,  is  occa 
sionally  almost  put  into  use  when  new  admin 
istrations  try  to  have  receptions  where  the 
privileged  few  are  allowed  a  brief  encounter 
with  the  royal  presence  in  the  Blue  Room, 
serving  temporarily  as  a  holy  of  holies.  The 
White  House,  as  is  natural,  is  the  constant 
theater  of  the  conflict  to  be  observed  every 
where  in  American  life  between  our  wish  to 
have  an  aristocracy  and  our  wish  not  to.  But, 
on  the  whole,  the  disinterested  observer  must 
adjudge  victory  to  our  deep-seated  democracy 
which  makes  it  really  unsuitable  that  the 
White  House  should  ever  be  exactly  fash 
ionable. 

We  never  forget  not  only  that  the  Presi 
dential  residence  is  our  house,  but  that  the 
President  in  it  is  our  man.  The  almost  Uto 
pian  democracy  of  public  receptions  at  the 
White  House  is  both  engaging  and  pictur 
esque.  In  the  early  days  Congressmen  used 
to  come  to  them  with  bowie-knives  in  their 
high,  cowhide  boots;  and  in  Jackson's  time 
guards  with  stout  sticks  beat  back  the  guests 
while  the  food  was  being  fetched  from  the 


HO        American  Towns  and  People 

kitchens.  Then  an  evening  party  had  all  the 
charm  of  a  riot.  A  diplomat  complained  not 
so  long  ago  that  even  at  the  exclusive  recep 
tions  for  the  Corps  the  American  young  ladies 
surreptitiously  cut  all  the  buttons  oft'  his 
clothes  for  souvenirs. 

Another  diplomat,  new  to  these  democratic 
shores,  arriving  late  for  a  New- Year's  day 
reception,  was  astonished  to  find  that  the  Ne 
gro  hackman  who  had  driven  him  to  the 
White  House  had  slipped  in  ahead  of  him 
and  was  the  first  to  grasp  the  Presidential 
hand!  He  could  not  understand  that  the 
Executive  hand  is  as  much  the  people's  prop 
erty  as  the  mansion.  Mr.  Washington  did 
not  shake  hands,  but  since  then  every  Presi 
dential  paw  has  been  squeezed  by  the  pop 
ulace  almost  beyond  the  power  of  flaxseed 
poultices  or  massage  to  bring  it  back  to  any 
thing  like  original  shape.  The  shake  is  ex 
pected  to  be  wholesome  and  hearty — even  a 
Boston  gentleman  complained,  under  Tyler's 
administration,  that  he  had  caught  cold  from 
shaking  the  President's  hand. 

Even  while  we  pay  respect  to  Presidents, 
we  like  them  to  feel  that  they  are  like  our 
selves.  An  ex-President's  wife  tells  a  story 
of  her  daughter  ordering  shoes  in  Philadel 
phia  and  asking  that  they  should  be  sent  and 
charged  to  Mrs.  William  Howard  Taft,  The 


Washington,  the  Cosmopolitan        ill 

White  House,  Washington.  The  name  and 
address  were  delivered  with  a  simple,  nat 
ural,  and  unpretentious  pride.  But  the 
shop  young  lady  merely  inquired,  brightly, 
"D.C> 

The  White  House  soon  ceased  to  be  a  pal 
ace  and  became  more  and  more  an  "ideal 
American  home."  Its  corridors  are  haunted 
by  the  domestic  virtues.  It  supplies  the  fem 
inine  element  so  necessary  in  governments — 
and  some  say  in  religions.  Let  a  marriage  or 
a  birth  take  place  in  the  White  House,  and 
countless  thousands  over  the  land  dissolve  in  a 
sentimental  ecstasy  of  domestic  emotion.  It 
is,  indeed,  difficult  for  an  inmate  of  the  man 
sion  to  remain  single  or  to  practice  race  sui 
cide  there — vox  popull  seems  to  forbid. 

The  White  House  is,  in  fact,  a  sort  of  na 
tional  shrine.  The  life  of  its  inhabitants  is 
closely  watched  by  the  lynx-eyed  all  over  the 
country,  ready  and  willing  to  detect  any  vari 
ation  from  the  national  moral  standard. 
There  is  no  detail  of  White  House  life  or  ad 
ministration  too  small  to  be  lit  by  the  lime 
light.  As  early  as  John  Quincy  Adams  there 
was  bitter  criticism  of  the  immorality  of  put 
ting  a  billiard-table  into  the  White  House. 
Even  the  question  of  Presidential  "cuspi 
dors" —  But  no  apology  need  be  offered  for 
grappling  with  a  subject  which  in  any 


112        American  Towns  and  People 

thoughtful  survey  of  American  life  and  social 
conditions  deserves  an  attention  not  hitherto 
given  it  by  serious  writers.  Treated  at  length, 
the  utensil  might  gain  an  almost  epic  quality; 
for  the  day  was  when  a  good  aim  at  it  gave 
you  a  position  in  the  community  in  which  you 
lived.  Here  it  can  only  be  used  to  illustrate 
how  the  White  House  conservatively  and  dis 
creetly  marks  the  rising  tide  of  national  re 
finement.  President  Van  Buren  was  accused 
of  extravagance  and  luxury  in  having 
equipped  the  official  residence  too  freely  and 
elegantly.  Impassioned  patriots  from  the 
West  roused  anti-administration  enthusiasm 
by  descriptions  of  a  simple  wooden  box  of 
sawdust.  And  yet  only  a  comparatively  few 
decades  later,  under  President  Arthur,  the 
White  House  cuspidors  were — possibly  pre 
maturely — sold  at  public  auction! 

To  speak  seriously,  year  by  year  the  Presi 
dent's  house  pretty  fairly  represents  our  na 
tional  ideals.  And  there  are  simple  anecdotes 
in  its  history,  like  the  one  of  a  President's  turn 
ing  handsprings  for  his  little  sons  only  three 
hours  before  he  was  assassinated,  which  must 
move  any  American  deeply  with  a  sense  of  his 
genuine  indigenous  democracy.  American 
ism,  as  a  word,  sometimes  seems  to  be  a  little 
flyblown  these  days.  But  its  reality  is  proven 
by  the  very  way  in  which,  estimating  Wash- 


Washington,  the  Cosmopolitan        113 

ington,  we  know  we  must  inevitably  give  the 
precedence  to  the  official  world. 

There  is  a  heroic,  almost  grandiose,  quality 
in  Washington  official  society.  And  here  the 
bare  facts  and  figures  about  "calling"  speak 
more  eloquently  than  can  any  commentator 
upon  them.  In  hurried  centers  of  civilization, 
such  as  New  York,  "the  call"  is  remembered 
merely  as  something  mother  used  to  make. 
In  Washington  it  survives  not  quaintly,  but 
in  full  vigor. 

A  woman  whose  husband  is  fairly  high  up 
in  governmental  circles  makes,  if  she  does  her 
duty,  between  fifteen  and  eighteen  hundred 
calls  a  winter!  These  calls  have  to  be  made 
on  the  official  day  of  each  hostess — the  Sen 
ate  ladies,  for  example,  receive  only  on  Thurs 
days — an  arrangement  which  ingeniously  and 
cruelly  distributes  the  calling  over  the  whole 
season. 

There  is  an  elaborate  ritual  of  calls,  depend 
ent  upon  official  rank.  Of  course  we  are  too 
young  a  country  to  have  anything  as  marvel 
ous  as  the  table  in  the  British  Peerage  by 
which  you  may  learn  that  the  Hon.  Muriel 
Snaggs  is  accurately  the  eighteen-hundred- 
and-thirty-ninth  most  important  person  in  the 
United  Kingdom.  But  precedence  flourishes 
in  Washington.  The  Cabinet  calls  first  on 
the  Senate,  but  the  House  calls  first  on  the 


H4        American  Towns  and  People 

Cabinet.  The  hardest  initiation,  of  course,  is 
of  those  who  must  call  first  on  the  four  hun 
dred  and  thirty-five  representatives.  Calls 
must  be  returned  on  the  first  official  day,  if 
there  is  no  official  day  within  three  days. 
There  is  more,  but  this  much  must  serve  to 
suggest  the  horrors  of  a  monstrous  system. 

There  have  been,  of  course,  individual  re 
volts  and  concerted  attempts  at  simplification. 
A  "Congressional  Club"  was  lately  formed  to 
herd  women  together  that  they  might  be 
called  upon  en  masse.  To  give  one  instance, 
over  fifty  Congressional  ladies  living  in  the 
same  hotel  banded  together  to  receive.  On  ar 
rival  you  were  confronted  by  baskets  to  re 
ceive  cards — over  fifty,  all  sweetly  ornamented 
with  bows  of  pink  ribbon.  Is  the  scene  not 
one  Watteau  would  have  loved  to  paint?  Be 
yond  the  pretty  baskets  were  the  Congressional 
ladies'  hands,  over  fifty,  to  be  shaken;  over 
fifty  lovely  birds  to  be  killed,  as  it  were,  with 
one  stone.  But,  unhappily,  it  was  soon  ru 
mored  that  the  banded  ladies  did  not  consider 
this  a  call,  but  only  an  agreeable  opportunity 
to  make  acquaintance  before  the  formal  indi 
vidual  visits.  The  car  of  Juggernaut  was 
weighted  a  little  more  heavily,  that  was  all. 

A  victim  must  be  quoted :  she  makes  eight 
een  hundred  calls  a  year,  not  counting  pri 
vate  or  unofficial  calls — pleasure  calls,  if  you 


Washington,  the   Cosmopolitan        115 

care  so  to  describe  them.  She  says,  simply  and 
touchingly,  "I  find  I  must  give  up  a  great  deal 
in  order  to  accomplish  all  this  and  not  kill 
myself."  But  she  goes  on  in  a  strain  of  im 
passioned  and  martyred  optimism  which, 
somehow,  makes  one  understand  that  the  sys 
tem  cannot  be  changed :  "In  one  way  it  is  a 
blessing.  Wives  from  different  parts  of  the 
country  meet;  there  is  an  exchange  of  ideas 
and  views,  and  a  better  understanding  between 
the  sections.  Washington  is  different  from 
any  other  place,  and  it  is  a  pity  not  to  enjoy  it 
to  the  full  as  it  is." 

Even  outside  official  circles,  calling  pre 
vails.  When  Miss  Harriet  Martineau,  years 
ago,  arrived  in  Washington,  four  hundred 
strangers  called  on  her  during  the  first  twenty- 
four  hours.  Women  who  have  moved  to 
Washington  ostensibly  for  their  own  pleasure 
have  been  known  to  spend  an  hour  every  day 
of  their  lives  calling.  It  becomes  not  only  a 
habit,  but  a  passion — a  passion  exemplified  in 
the  Washington  lady  who  was  described  by 
her  "friend"  as  "such  a  sweet,  good-natured 
woman;  she  returns  your  call  even  when  you 
haven't  made  one!" 

Almost  the  highest  comedy  of  democracy 
is  said  to  be  the  first  reception-days  of  green 
Congressional  wives,  an  experience  to  which 
these  gallant  women  advance  each  year  in 


n6        American  Towns  and  People 

solid  formation.  One  is  almost  glad  to  hear 
of  a  deserter.  There  was  a  wayward,  rebel 
lious,  and  charming  Congressional  creature  re 
cently  who,  as  the  fateful  hour  approached 
when  she  was  to  be  "at  home,"  suddenly  put 
on  her  hat  and  bolted,  panic-stricken,  round 
the  block.  But  when,  forcing  herself  to  pass 
her  house  again,  she  saw  a  group  of  ladies 
ringing  her  door-bell,  she  impulsively  joined 
them  and  went  in.  Was  she  not,  like  them, 
a  Congressman's  wife  with  a  right  to  call  any 
where,  even  upon  herself?  They  sat  down 
and,  while  waiting  for  the  hostess,  chatted 
agreeably.  And  when,  at  the  end  of  it,  the 
callers  began  to  comment  wonderingly  upon 
the  continued  absence  of  the  lady  of  the  house, 
our  heroine  smiled  enigmatically:  "I  don't 
believe,"  she  said,  "we  had  any  of  us  better 
wait  any  longer  for  her.  I  hear — "  she 
paused  and  she  spoke  with  meaning — "I  hear 
she's  very  odd!"  She  rose,  and  the  other 
ladies  with  her.  She  went  on  with  them  to 
call  on  another  Congressman's  wife. 

Congressmen  themselves  do  not  call  a  great 
deal,  it  goes  without  saying.  Their  leisure  is 
traditionally  spent  with  their  feet  either  high 
above  their  heads  upon  the  mantelpiece  or 
under  the  poker-table — though  at  the  national 
game  the  Senate  is  supposed  to  surpass  the 
House.  Indeed,  even  more  than  the  compan- 


Washington,  the  Cosmopolitan        117 

ionship  of  champagne-haired  female  secre 
taries  and  lobbyists,  are  cards  supposed  to  fill 
the  rakish  idle  hours  of  Senators.  Foreign 
ers,  hearing  statesmen  whisper  chucklingly  to 
one  another  of  "full  houses,"  are  said  to  have 
rushed  vainly  to  Capitol  Hill,  expecting  great 
events  in  the  halls  of  legislation.  Congress 
men  have,  of  course,  been  changing  with  the 
years.  They  motor  now  and  play  golf  at 
Chevy  Chase,  and  some  of  them  "clean  up 
and  go  out  to  dinner"  when  night  falls.  In 
deed,  the  government  itself  encourages  their 
softer  side.  It  was  for  a  long  time  possible 
for  Congressmen  to  have  bouquets  sent  free  to 
ladies  from  the  government  greenhouses — cu- 
pid's  "graf  t."  Even  the  most  reluctant  Ameri 
can  male  cannot  wholly  withstand  the  influ 
ence  of  a  town  which  is  essentially  human  and 
intimate,  in  the  sense  that  its  inhabitants  are 
extraordinarily  dependent  upon  one  another 
for  all  their  amusement.  Indeed,  what  else 
have  they  upon  which  they  could  depend? 

Upon  this  point  the  diplomatic  colony,  ac 
customed  to  the  agrements  of  the  capitals  of 
the  world,  might  be  consulted,  if  they  only 
dared  to  speak  frankly.  Washingtonians  they 
have  always  found  hospitable  and  agreeable, 
but  Washington,  as  a  town,  a  desert.  There 
are  few  restaurants.  There  is  no  opera  and 
little  music.  There  are  theaters,  and  there 


n8        American  Towns  and  People 

was  once  a  happy  period  for  their  managers 
when  rival  political  parties  demonstrated  their 
social  strength  by  going  to  the  play  in  large 
and  brilliant  bands. 

Everybody  in  Washington  can  be  at  an 
evening  party,  for  everybody  is  in  society  of 
some  sort.  There  are  no  lower  classes,  man 
ual  labor  being  performed  almost  exclusively 
by  blacks,  who,  without  unfriendliness,  may 
be  described  as  socially  non-existent.  Every 
body  has  some  one  to  call  upon  and  to  be  en 
tertained  by.  So  aggravated  does  Washing 
ton's  social  activity  sometimes  seem  that  it  has 
been  described  as  "a  town  where  the  streets 
are  always  empty  and  the  houses  always 
crowded." 

Early  in  Washingtonian  history  the  packed 
sardine  became  the  social  ideal.  A  success 
ful  evening  at  the  White  House  in  Mrs.  Madi 
son's  time  was  colloquially  termed  a  "squeeze," 
while  its  melancholy  opposite  was  described 
as  a  "thin"  drawing-room.  A  philosophic 
female  critic  of  those  days  put  forth  the  the 
ory  that  Washington  women  had  a  position 
far  in  advance  of  any  others  in  the  country 
because  their  parties  were  so  crowded  that 
ladies  could  not  sit  and  wait  decorously  for 
gentlemen  to  approach  them,  but  instead  stood, 
walked  about,  and  even  sometimes  ventured 
to  speak  first  themselves !  The  habit  of  crowd- 


Washington,  the  Cosmopolitan        119 

ing  extends  beyond  the  White  House.  Once 
at  one  of  the  Oriental  embassies  some  four 
or  five  hundred  quite  uninvited  guests  forced 
their  way  in  and  left  only  when  the  sly  East 
erners  actually  put  burning  pepper  in  a  jar 
to  drive  them  out! 

There  is  a  story  always  prevalent  at  the 
capital  of  a  strange  race  of  indigenous  in 
habitants  who  antedate  its  establishment. 
These  are  supposed  to  be  the  descendants  of 
the  aristocratic  first  families  of  Georgetown 
— that  now  faded,  lovely  little  city  near  which 
the  founders  of  Washington  built.  To  them, 
it  is  alleged,  the  governmental  town  still 
seems  modern  and  vulgar,  and  its  inhabitants 
simply  people  one  does  not  know.  In  their 
shabby  but  exquisite  Georgian  drawing-rooms 
they  lurk,  sipping  China  tea  out  of  thin,  an 
cestral  cups.  No  one  knows  them,  visits  them, 
or,  indeed,  has  ever  seen  them.  This  is,  of 
course,  what  makes  possible  the  pretty  legend. 
Every  one  should  try  to  believe  it;  it  lends  a 
soft,  fragrant,  Southern  bloom  to  the  shadows 
of  the  somewhat  over-colored  picture  of  na 
tional  society  gathered  from  every  corner  of 
the  country. 

Outside  "official"  society  there  has  been 
from  the  beginning  a  smaller  and  more  fash 
ionable  circle  at  the  capital,  to  which  many 
of  the  chosen  of  the  people  from  the  remoter 


I2O        American   Towns  and  People 

districts  have  seemed  a  little  uncouth.  (A 
Philadelphia!!  Washingtonian  of  the  early 
days  was  amused  by  two  Senators  who  had 
never  seen  a  "forte-piano,"  as  she  termed  that 
musical  instrument.) 

Politics — and  Senators — are  sometimes  the 
fashion  with  this  set,  sometimes  not.  Just  now 
they  are  pretty  much  in  vogue,  having  come 
in  with  intelligence  and  "uplift,"  and  broader 
interests  and  other  fashionable  fads.  But  the 
day,  not  so  far  back,  can  be  remembered  in 
Washington  when  in  the  beau  monde  ladies 
said,  "We  had  the  Senator  to  dine  last  night," 
it  was  quite  clear  who  was  meant,  as  there 
was  only  one  Senator  who  could  be  trusted 
to  eat  in  the  open.  And,  so  little  as  ten  years 
a£°>  gaY  parties  were  made  up  to  visit  the 
Capitol,  rather  as  one  went  to  the  Zoo,  to  see 
a  representative  who  was  said  never  to  have 
washed.  Even  now  you  can  hear  in  Wash 
ington  that  an  administration  is  or  is  not  fash 
ionable,  and  learn  of  periods  when  it  is  not 
at  all  "the  thing"  to  go  to  the  White  House. 
All  this  is  pleasant  and  piquant,  though  we, 
the  plain  people,  know  in  our  hearts  that  the 
third  cousin  of  a  Congressman's  wife  in  white 
wool  and  rubbers,  making  her  way  on  the 
street-car  to  "pour"  at  an  afternoon  tea  is 
more  the  real  thing  than  the  most  fashionable 
unofficial  lady,  in  whatever  corresponds  in 


The  austere  towers  of  the  Smithsonian  Institute. 


Washington,  the  Cosmopolitan        121 

modern  life  to  the  traditional  point-lace  and 
diamonds,  going  out  in  the  most  inclosed  lim 
ousine  to  dine  at  an  embassy.  The  more  ele 
gant  of  the  two  females  is,  after  all,  only  a 
camp-follower,  an  exquisite  vivandiere  in  at 
tendance  upon  the  great  political  army. 

So  many  settlers  have  frankly  migrated  to 
the  capital  for  its  softer  climate  and  its  greater 
social  advantages  that  Washington  has  be 
come  a  national  clearing-house  for  agreeable 
people  from  all  regions  of  the  country.  The 
capital  is,  in  our  land,  about  the  only  place 
except  the  grave  to  which  people  may  "retire" 
with  any  hope  of  peace.  Indeed,  its  air  of 
leisure  and  its  freedom  from  commerce  make 
it  in  certain  aspects  almost  like  a  watering- 
place,  a  health  resort. 

Every  one  is  welcome  in  Washington — 
though  this  is  no  complete  catalogue.  The 
capital  is,  to  take  one  example,  "peculiarly 
indicated,"  as  they  say  abroad  in  pamphlets 
about  watering-places,  for  rich  widows,  who, 
in  a  mild  interest  in  politics  and  in  the  sooth 
ing  conversation  of  the  younger  diplomats, 
find  some  assuagement.  They  build  their 
lovely  palaces  and  spin  their  frail  webs  in  all 
the  principal  cross-roads.  And  every  year 
ladies  who  are,  like  Melisande,  not  quite 
happy  at  home  move  to  Washington.  There 
are  Bostonians  who  cannot  bear  Boston,  and 


122        American  Towns  and  People 

Chicagoans  who  cannot  stand  Chicago.  Also 
many  who  cannot  quite  decide  to  live  abroad, 
and  so  compromise  on  the  capital.  Washing 
ton  is,  in  fact,  almost  the  great  American  so 
cial  adventure,  the  melting-pot  of  Americans 
themselves. 

Washington  used  to  be  a  city  of  boarding- 
houses — at  one  of  them  in  the  '40*3  a  distin 
guished  foreign  visitor  quite  by  chance  had 
Mr.  Henry  Clay  next  her  at  the  breakfast- 
table — and  even  now  it  is  permissible  for  a 
Vice-President  to  inhabit  a  hotel.  But  the 
glory  of  the  boarding-house  is  waning.  *  Now 
adays  there  are  plenty  of  palaces,  much  ele 
gance,  and  excellent  champagne.  There  are 
moments  when  Washington,  even  official 
Washington,  seems  merely  gay  and  fashion 
able.  But  through  it  all  there  is  the  homely 
homespun  quality  which  we  can  still  claim  as 
American.  There  was  a  story,  not  long  ago, 
of  a  Secretary  of  State  who  met  a  newly  ar 
rived  ambassador  of  a  great  European  Power 
for  the  first  time  at  an  evening  party. 

"The  boys  up  at  the  Department  were  tell 
ing  me  this  morning,"  began  Mr.  Secretary, 
genially,  "that  there  were  some  difficulties  be 
tween  your  country  and  mine." 

"Yes,  yes,"  murmured  the  astonished  for 
eigner,  who  had  been  sent  especially  to  discuss 
this  serious  matter  of  a  lapsed  treaty. 


Washington,  the  Cosmopolitan        123 

"Oh,  that's  all  right,"  pursued  the  Secre 
tary.  "I  told  the  boys  I  didn't  know  much 
about  it,  but  I  was  sure  the  trouble  wasn't  as 
serious  as  they  thought.  We'll  fix  it."  And 
here  he  turned  to  where  the  ambassador's 
proud  and  distinguished  wife  stood,  talking 
to  Mrs.  Secretary.  "If  your  husband  and  I 
can't  get  this  straightened  out,"  said  he,  beam 
ingly,  "then  you  and  mamma  must  put  your 
heads  together  and  do  it  for  us — that's  all!" 

In  a  town  where  primitive  democratic  sim 
plicity  stands  thus  unabashed  before  effete 
Europe,  it  is  obvious  that  much  social  gayety 
is  essentially  tentative  and  educational.  Wash 
ington  is  our  great  national  school  of  "dining- 


out." 


With  all  the  development  of  American 
civilization,  "dining-out"  has  still — let  us  be 
honest — for  the  greater  part  of  the  native-born 
a  character  at  once  semi-sacred  and  terrifying. 
The  magazine  advertisements  give  glimpses 
of  our  easier,  more  genuinely  characteristic 
circles,  where  the  arrival  of  guests  is  signal 
ized  by  the  decanning  of  some  beans  and  the 
opening  of  a  bottle  of  Ohio  champagne.  And 
ladies  may  arrive  in  Washington  with  the 
conception,  so  prevalent  in  the  most  popular 
books  and  plays,  that  a  butterfly  of  fashion  is 
mainly  occupied  with  bridge  parties  and  aft 
ernoon  teas.  But  at  the  capital  they  soon 


124        American  Towns  and  People 

wake  to  the  fact  that  even  a  "ladies'  lunch," 
however  prettily  the  table  and  the  salad  may 
be  decorated,  gets  them  nowhere;  and  that 
only  formal,  concerted,  night  feeding  is  so 
cially  valuable. 

In  Washington,  however,  as  everywhere  in 
America,  man  lags  behind  in  all  social  ac 
tivities.  The  burden  of  eating  and  overeat 
ing  always  falls  heavily  on  a  comparatively 
small  band  of  dining  males.  You  take  in  the 
same  lady  pretty  often.  Apropos  of  this,  there 
is  a  story  of  a  weary  young  Washingtonian 
who  proposed  marriage  in  this  impassioned 
phrase,  "You  see,  dear,  if  we  are  married 
they'll  have  to  stop  putting  us  next  each  other 
at  dinner." 

It  is  needless  to  insist  upon  the  value,  in  such 
a  society,  of  aliens,  who  eat  out  easily.  In 
deed,  it  can  scarcely  be  wondered  at  if  second, 
third,  and  fourth  secretaries  of  the  embassies 
come  to  believe  that  the  services  expected  of 
them  are  wholly  gastronomic.  There  was  a 
preposterous  story  at  the  time  when  Washing 
ton's  chief  club  burned  that,  in  its  very  smok 
ing  ruins,  young  diplomats  were  seen  by  the 
firemen  hurriedly  counting  their  boiled  shirts 
to  make  sure  that  they  could  still  dine  out 
every  night  that  week! 

A  young  American  girl  may  learn  to  reject 
foreigners  almost  as  well  in  Washington  as 


Washington,  the  Cosmopolitan        125 

abroad — or  to  marry  them.  Since  the  begin 
ning,  the  ladies  of  the  capital  have  made  dis 
tinguished,  picturesque,  romantic  alliances 
with  Europe,  from  the  Georgetown  girl  who 
married  the  Russian  ambassador  and  became 
the  famous  Madame  Bodesco,  to  Jackson's 
Peggy  Eaton,  who  in  her  old  age  married  an 
Italian  dancing-master  who  rewarded  her  by 
eloping  with  her  fortune  and  her  favorite 
grandchild! 

American  men  are  not  linguists,  and  an  am 
bassador  was  once  introduced  to  a  gentleman 
who  immediately  described  himself,  "Moi,  je 
suis  le  senateur  qui  parle  frangais"  Yet, 
somehow,  even  without  the  languages,  agree 
able  relations  go  on,  and  pleasant  friendships 
are  made.  Washington,  perhaps  more  than 
travels,  teaches  us  how  like  ourselves  foreign 
ers  really  are.  And  they  have  made  notable 
contributions  to  our  American  civilization. 
Ice-cream — pie's  only  rival  in  our  national 
affections — was  actually  introduced  as  a  nov 
elty  at  a  party  at  the  French  ambassador's, 
and  it  is  significant  that,  as  a  chronicler  of 
the  time  reports,  "the  guests  were  so  impatient 
for  it  that  there  was  great  disorder." 

The  war,  with  its  resultant  solemn  and  at 
first  tragic  inhibitions,  somewhat  withdrew 
foreigners  from  the  Washingtonian  picture. 
But  they  soon  again  diversified  and  enlivened 


ia6       American  Towns  and  People 

it  as  they  have  from  its  earliest  days.  It  is 
but  simple  justice  to  say  that  they  contribute 
enormously  to  the  capital's  famous  "pleasant 
ness,"  to  its  half-gay,  half-cultured  air  of  ease. 
Art  has  no  special  place  in  Washington,  cer 
tainly  no  Bohemian  haunts;  but  it  has,  as  it 
were,  an  excellent  social  position.  Foreigners, 
who  have  all  been  on  easy  terms  with  it  in 
the  capitals  of  Europe,  find  it  neither  unnat 
ural  nor  unmanly  to  speak  of  it  here  without 
shame.  It  is  not  obligatory  in  Washington  to 
have  cultivated  tastes,  but  on  the  whole  they 
are  not  thought  badly  of.  Indeed,  many  ad 
vantages  of  life  abroad  are  to  be  had  by  the 
Potomac,  including  leisure.  Washington  is 
not  merely  a  city  of  magnificent  distances — 
to  quote  the  phrase  for  which  it  is  indebted  to 
a  Portuguese  diplomat  of  its  earliest  days — 
it  is  also  a  town  of  spacious  leisure  for  amuse 
ment.  Perhaps  the  most  powerful  impression 
it  makes  upon  the  stranger  is  of  its  broad,  sun 
lit  idleness.  The  great,  sleepy  avenues  are 
typical  of  the  town's  immunity  from  toil. 
Government,  the  only  business  there,  cannot  be 
carried  on  without  some  slight  effort,  but  the 
servants  of  a  democracy  are  rarely  over 
worked.  The  eight-hour  day  has  long  been 
an  intolerable  burden  to  Washingtonians. 
Clerks  leave  the  departments  for  the  day  at 
an  hour  when  hard-working  New  York  brok- 


Washington,  the  Cosmopolitan        127 

ers  are  just  recovering  from  the  luncheon 
champagne  and  preparing  to  tackle  the  after 
noon's  business.  Washingtonians,  indeed,  al 
ways  seem  to  have  time  for  all  the  things  for 
which  the  inhabitants  of  our  huge,  lively  com 
mercial  centers  have  no  time — for  morning 
walks,  for  pleasant  afternoon  talks,  and  for 
knowing  everything  about  one  another's  af 
fairs.  It  is,  as  some  foreigner  aptly  put  it,  the 
salon  of  America. 

Though  Washingtonians  pass,  Washington 
itself  lives.  The  city  has  an  individuality,  a 
tone  which  cannot  but  affect  its  inhabitants. 
Its  amazing,  though  only  half-appreciated, 
architectural  beauty  must,  even  though  they 
are  unconscious  of  it,  transmute  somewhat  the 
arid  New-Englander  and  the  uncouth  West 
erner.  A  bland  climate  where  the  crocus 
often  pushes  through  the  grass  in  late  January 
must  help  teach  people  how  to  be  idle  and 
amiably  gossipy.  The  town  is  pleasant — that 
is  almost  its  most  obvious  characteristic — and 
pleasant  in  a  warm,  well-fed,  Southern  way 
which  is  irresistible.  The  Washingtonian  airs 
are  almost  as  redolent  of  good  cooking  as  the 
Philadelphian.  The  capital  lies  in  the  great 
food-belt  of  the  Chesapeake  Bay  and  the  Vir 
ginian  tidewater  country.  Washington  always 
seems  near  the  source  of  supplies.  You  used 
occasionally  to  see  in  the  main  shopping 


128        American   Towns  and  People 

streets  countrymen  with  three  or  four  ducks 
to  sell.  And  even  now  the  game  laws  are  mys 
teriously  relaxed  for  the  benefit  of  the  capital 
—many  a  New-Yorker  takes  the  trip  to  Wash 
ington  just  to  eat  quail.  The  markets  are 
sprawled  over  broad  streets  in  a  generous  con 
fusion.  Here  and  there  toiling  blacks  and 
turbaned  negresses  make  you  realize  that  this 
is  Southern  plenty.  In  spite  of  all  the  im 
provements  to  the  hotels,  the  best  and  most 
characteristic  eating-place  is  the  famous  oys 
ter-house  of  nineteenth-century  furniture  and 
odors,  where  the  bivalve,  roasted,  is  served 
with  a  sauce  such  as  never  was  by  sea  or  land 
by  grinning,  cheerful  black  waiters,  and  an 
even  blacker  cook  whom  you  instinctively  ad 
dress  as  "Snowball." 

The  traditional  Washingtonian  cook  is  a 
happy  person  of  color,  preparing  his  admir 
able  dishes  with  gusto  and  abandon.  He 
grows  rarer,  of  course,  as  the  old  South  passes. 
But  to  encounter  such  a  one  is  good  fortune, 
even  if  it  be  for  nothing  more  than  a  half- 
hour's  gastronomic  gossip.  The  occasion  is 
here  seized  to  record  such  a  brief  meeting  with 
a  distinguished  old  gentleman  of  color,  de 
scribed  by  a  competent  authority  as  the  best 
cook  in  America.  As  a  boy,  so  he  explained, 
he  had  been  apprenticed  in  Philadelphia  to  a 
famous  cook  who  was  then  an  old  man.  His 


Washington f  the  Cosmopolitan        129 

cooking  recipes  thus  go  back  to  Revolution 
ary  days,  with  only  one  transference  from 
hand  to  hand.  It  is  impossible  not  to  feel 
that  these  formulas,  never  committed  to  writ 
ing  or  to  print,  are  the  sacred  secrets  of  an 
ancient  and  honorable  profession.  It  is  ab 
surd,  perhaps,  but  a  vivid,  pleasant  sense  of 
the  country's  long  history  is  warmed  into  pa 
triotic  being  as  one  thinks  that  Mr.  Washing 
ton  may  have  eaten  with  relish  of,  shall  we  say, 
"snapping- turtle  soup"?  This,  says  the  old 
man  who  now  alone  can  prepare  it,  "we  used 
to  make  when  the  season  for  terrapin  was 
over";  and  he  adds,  in  a  decorous,  courtly, 
Southern  way,  "It  was  considered  one  of  the 
best  of  our  riverside  dishes."  Does  not  the 
last  phrase  suggest  delightfully  the  great  Po 
tomac,  and  the  pleasant  country,  and,  more, 
that  the  capital  has  by  the  famous  river's 
course  eaten  this  many  a  year  good  food  and 
drunk  good  wine  and  talked  good  talk? 

Washington,  when  the  day's  work  of  gov 
erning  the  land  is  over,  is  a  great,  warm,  sun 
lit,  spacious,  idle  drawing-room  where  one  can 
savor  to  the  full  the  flavor  of  our  own  Ameri 
can  land.  Even  the  dullest  imagination  must, 
on  Capitol  Hill,  stir  to  some  sense  of  the  pag 
eant  of  our  history,  to  some  memories  of  all  the 
great  Americans  \vho  have  through  the  years 
streamed  here  to  the  country's  heart.  The 


130        American  Towns  and  People 

town's  name  must,  even  while  we  are  gay  and 
idle  and  gossipy,  mean  something,  commemo 
rate  somehow  the  Father  of  his  Country.  He 
who  rode  horseback  over  the  lovely,  wooded 
Maryland  hills  to  choose  its  site  does  indeed 
still  haunt  them;  now  they  are  crowned  with 
marble.  He  lives.  And  Lincoln,  perhaps. 
And  many  others  if  we  have  heart  and  eyes  to 
see  them.  They,  too,  make  the  town  pleasant. 


Baltimore 

FOR  the  sentimental  traveler  in  our  coun 
try  one  of  the  pleasantest  adventures  will 
always  be  his  start  down  the  Atlantic  seaboard 
and  his  eager  watch  for  the  first  signs  that  he 
has  come  into  the  romantic  South.  There  has 
been  an  amazing  change  of  feeling  in  these 
peaceful  post-bellum  days;  it  is  scarcely  fan 
tastic  or  paradoxical  to  say  that  it  is  the  North 
erner  now  who  is  tenderest  of  the  memories  of 
that  earlier,  lovelier  South.  Yet  the  North 
erner,  on  his  romantic  journey,  is  only  too  apt 
to  think  that  until  he  has  at  least  crossed  the 
Potomac  he  is  still  in  his  own  country.  In 
deed,  it  is  often  only  orange  trees  and  palms 
which  will  finally  convince  him.  But  latitude 
and  climate  are  not  everything;  North  is 
North  and  South  is  South  in  spite  of  them. 
Even  if  the  snow  flies  as  his  train  pulls  into 
Baltimore,  he  should  descend  from  it,  for  he 
is  passing  the  South's  metropolis,  her  strong 
est,  richest  city — near  the  Northern  frontier, 
it  is  true,  but  proudly  asserting  her  right  to 
act  and  to  speak  for  the  South,  even  though 
in  those  old  war  days  she  was  racked  and 

131 


132        American  Towns  and  People 

torn  by  two  loyalties,  burnt  and  martyred  by 
the  flames  of  two  patriotisms. 

Baltimore's  present  "Southernness"  is  not 
perhaps  the  kind  of  thing  wholly  demonstra 
ble.  True,  you  will  at  once  hear  the  unmis 
takable  accent  upon  everybody's  lips.  And 
you  will  find  the  black  race  on  every  hand, 
often  in  picturesque  destitution  and  the  classic 
dishevelment  and  bandanna  head-dress,  but 
oftener  in  amazing  prosperity  and,  especially 
in  Druid  Hill  Park  of  a  Sunday,  in  dazzling 
and  immaculate  raiment.  But  the  Southern 
quality,  which  for  the  sentimental  traveler 
hangs  over  everything  like  a  veil,  is  more 
elusive.  There  are  streets  of  red  brick  houses 
which,  but  for  the  grace  of  God,  might  be  on 
Beacon  Hill  in  Boston.  There  are  white 
marble  steps  no  more  shining  than  those  in 
the  Quaker  neighbor,  Philadelphia.  There  is 
no  hint  of  decay  or  neglect  to  suggest  the  near 
ness  of  the  easy-going  subtropics.  Yet  some 
how  it  is  possible  to  detect  a  softer  grace,  a 
Southern  richness  of  bloom.  These  are  the 
people  who  so  naturally  speak  of  their  door 
steps  as  "pleasure  porches,"  and  call  a  strip  of 
beach  along  the  Chesapeake  a  "pleasure 
shore."  In  fact,  there  is  always  a  hint  of  leis 
ure  about  Baltimorean  activity — the  "rush 
hour"  comes  early.  And  there  seems  all 
through  the  day  more  time  than  in  most  places 


Baltimore  133 

for  the  smaller  courtesies;  probably  nowhere 
are  so  many  women  overburdened  with  heavy 
market-baskets  helped  to  mount  the  car  steps. 
Those  market-baskets,  too,  hint  at  good  living, 
"Southern  style."  But  Baltimore's  title  of 
"gastronomic  capital  of  America"  must  be 
treated  later,  more  at  length,  and  in  a  style 
more  impassioned  and  lyric.  It  must  be 
enough  now  to  say  that  there  is  all  through 
the  town  a  sense  of  that  richer  cuisine,  that 
more  frank  enjoyment  of  the  pleasures  of  the 
table,  which  here  with  us,  just  as  in  France, 
to  cite  a  suitable  gastronomic  example,  tells 
you  that  you  are  headed  Southward. 

Baltimore's  streets  are  little  vexed  by  tour 
ists,  for  the  most  part  undisturbed  by  the 
rumble  and  the  megaphones  of  "sightseeing 
wagons."  Lounging  along  them,  it  is  possible 
to  have  something  of  that  pride  of  discoverer 
and  explorer  which  to  any  true  lover  of  towns 
and  sights  gives  such  a  warming  proprietary 
feeling.  Baltimore  is  so  near  at  hand  that  it 
seems  obvious — and  is  neglected.  It  has,  it 
must  be  admitted,  few  definite  "sights,"  ex 
cept  an  admirable  gallery  of  paintings,  which 
is  unaccountably  kept  closed  for  almost  half 
the  year.  There  is,  if  you  like,  little  to  see — 
just  the  town  itself.  But  the  town  itself  is 
so  very  pleasant! 

At  the  very  beginning  it  is  almost  inevitable 


134        American   Towns  and  People 

that  one  should  speak  of  the  monument  to 
Washington.  It  is  around  it,  sitting  upon  its 
green  hill,  that  the  town  groups  itself,  and  to 
it,  in  a  way,  that  one's  memories  of  Baltimore 
cling.  The  monument  still  manages,  in  spite 
of  the  passing  of  almost  a  century  and  the 
coming  of  steel  construction  and  skyscrapers, 
to  dominate  the  Baltimorean  scene.  It  will 
probably  be  the  center  of  the  view  from  your 
hotel  window.  You  will  see  it  in  its  small 
park,  surrounded  by  respectable  pleasant 
streets  of  spacious  old  brick  houses,  and  be 
yond  it  the  gilded  domes  of  the  old  Roman 
Catholic  cathedral,  giving  a  curious  exotic 
touch  to  the  picture,  while  they  also  remind 
you  of  the  Calverts  and  the  early  days  of  the 
Catholic  colony.  You  may  perhaps  see  flying 
against  the  blue  sky  a  flag  with  the  colors  of 
the  Calverts;  colors  worn,  too,  in  the  Mary 
land  thickets  by  the  Baltimore  oriole.  But 
the  eye  will  come  back  to  the  gray  pledge  of 
Maryland's  loyalty,  the  first  memorial  set  up 
in  the  whole  country  to  the  great  Washing 
ton. 

The  column  is  perhaps  of  no  great  intrinsic 
beauty,  its  proportions  have  even  been  de 
scribed  by  the  irreverent  as  "dumpy,"  but  any 
thing  so  skillfully  placed  would  have  an  effect, 
and,  in  fact,  the  shaft  has  the  solemn,  yet 
good-natured,  dignity  of  which  the  eighteenth 


Baltimore  135 

century  and  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
knew  so  well  the  trick.  It  has  very  definitely 
"an  air."  You  take  off  your  hat  to  it,  with 
some  show  of  old-fashioned  politeness,  and 
you  realize  that  you  are  in  a  "gentleman's 
town." 

Mount  Vernon  and  Washington  Places 
form  a  Maltese  cross  of  green,  in  which  there 
are  statues  of  local  men  of  note,  a  Barye  lion, 
and  some  good  bronze  groups  of  Peace  and 
War  contemplating  a  scene  now  so  manifestly 
devoted  to  the  former.  Down  the  hill  in  front 
goes  a  path  broken  by  steps,  statues,  and  a 
fountain,  and  bordered  by  green  bushes  and 
rose-trellises.  There  is  a  pleasant  legend  of 
a  gay  return  from  the  ball,  when,  to  win  a  mad 
bet,  a  famous  belle  of  an  earlier  day  plunged 
into  the  marble  basin  of  the  fountain,  a  lovely 
naiad  in  a  satin  frock.  Such  memories,  how 
ever,  do  not  disturb  the  present  decorum  of 
the  scene.  Indeed,  from  the  foot  of  the  hill, 
to  see  the  Father  of  His  Country  keeping 
guard  over  his  city  of  Baltimore  is  a  se 
renely  solemn  thing.  You  remember  that  it 
was  over  Fort  McHenry  down  the  bay  that  the 
star-spangled  banner  floated  which  inspired 
our  national  song,  sung  for  the  first  time  in  the 
old  Holliday  Street  Theatre,  on  a  site  where 
you  may  now  hear  the  villain  of  modest- 
priced  melodrama  tear  a  passion  to  tatters. 


136        American   Towns  and  People 

Curiously  enough,  however,  for  all  the 
memories  of  '76  and  1812,  there  is  scarcely  a 
town  in  the  country  which  still  so  definitely 
keeps  its  English  characteristics  and  seems  so 
to  have  preserved  the  continuity  of  its  tradi 
tions.  The  mere  names  of  the  streets  are  a 
delight.  Alpaca  Alley,  Apple  Court,  April 
Alley,  and  Apricot  Court — the  alphabet  be 
gins  well.  There  are,  of  course,  the  names 
which  suggest  history,  Calvert  and  Howard 
Streets,  and  Cathedral  Street  shedding  peace. 
Also  Charles  Street,  which,  humorously 
enough,  is  prolonged  by  Charles  Street  Ave 
nue,  and  this  by  Charles  Street  Avenue  Ex 
tension.  But  there  are  also  Crooked  Lane, 
Comet  Street,  and  Crab  Court,  Cuba  Street, 
China  Street — remember  the  days  of  Balti 
more  clipper-ships — Featherbed  Lane,  and 
Fawn  Street.  Friendship  is  a  street,  an  alley, 
an  avenue,  and  a  court.  There  is  Lovegrove 
Alley  now,  and  there  used  to  be  Lovely  Lane. 
Johnny-Cake  Road  still  leads  to  Johnny-Cake 
Town.  Jew  Alley,  Madeira  Court,  Maiden 
Choice  Lane,  Nero  Alley,  Pen  Lucy  Avenue, 
Pin  Alley,  Plover  Street,  and  Plum  Row — 
can  London  itself  do  better?  And  naturally 
there  is  Petticoat  Lane.  Plowman  Street, 
Sarah  Ann  Street — but  the  list  already  gives 
the  authentic  British  flavor  of  Baltimorean 
nomenclature. 


Baltimore  137 

Charles  Dickens  noted  the  British  quality  in 
the  Baltimore  of  his  day. 

"The  most  comfortable  of  all  hotels  in  the 
United  States,"  he  says,  "is  Barnum's,  where 
the  English  traveler  will  find  curtains  to  his 
bed,  for  the  first  and  probably  the  last  time 
in  America." 

There  is  more,  not  complimentary  to  the 
rest  of  the  country,  about  finding  enough 
water  for  washing  in  the  bedrooms.  And 
it  is  possible  to  argue  about  the  good  of  bed- 
curtains.  Still,  as  a  contemporary  bit  of  evi 
dence  on  our  special  point  it  is  interesting. 

There  has  never  been  a  great  foreign  popu 
lation  in  this  part  of  Maryland,  beyond  a  re 
spectable  sprinkling  of  Germans.  The  names 
above  the  shops  are  largely  English  names, 
and  the  faces  in  the  streets  are  for  the  most 
part  American  faces,  a  state  of  things  un 
known  to  the  present  generation  in  such  towns 
as  Boston,  New  York,  or  Chicago.  It  has 
been  easy,  under  such  conditions,  for  old  cus 
toms  to  survive.  Even  in  the  newspapers  old 
phrases  still  are  found.  An  auctioneer,  for 
example,  advertises  the  sale  of  furniture  be 
longing  to  "a  well-known  family  now  declin 
ing  housekeeping."  Madeira  and  port  are 
still  occasionally  drunk  in  Baltimore  from 
the  ancestral  cellars  of  old-school  gentlemen 
living  about  Mount  Vernon  Place,  and,  until 


138        American  Towns  and  People 

lately  at  modest  wine-dealers7  bars  by  the  or 
dinary  clerk  or  artisan,  who  everywhere  else 
in  the  country  would  have  either  fuddled  him 
self  with  spirits  or  ruined  his  digestion  with 
ice-cream  sodas.  Occasionally,  as  happens  in 
America,  can  be  found  a  custom  long  passed 
by  in  the  older  country.  You  might  hunt  the 
length  and  breadth  of  England  without  find 
ing  what  you  may  see  in  Baltimore,  the  sign 
board  of  a  barber  who  professes  himself 
ready  to  do  "cupping  and  leeching,"  this 
queer  eighteenth-century  trade  surviving  al 
most  at  the  very  gates  of  the  great  Johns  Hop 
kins  Hospital  and  its  modern  medical  school. 

At  the  top  of  the  steps  up  to  the  monument 
you  perhaps  saw  a  colored  vendor  of  flowers, 
making  a  gay  patch  against  the  green  and 
gray.  He  was  probably  the  only  flower  mer 
chant  from  whom  it  would  be  the  correct 
thing  to  buy  at  that  place.  For  there  is  al 
ways  in  Baltimore  one  shop  to  which  one 
should  go.  Immemorial  custom,  the  con 
tinued  patronage  of  the  gentry,  have  settled 
where  you  must  purchase  everything,  from  a 
fresh  egg  to  a  tiara.  Yet  the  other  shops  have 
a  trim  and  satisfactory  air,  and  somehow  the 
respectability  of  those  of  a  prosperous  county- 
town  in  England. 

The  English  connection  was  a  close  one  in 
the  early  days,  even  after  the  Revolution. 


Baltimore  139 

The  daughters  of  one  single  family  became 
the  Marchioness  of  Wellesley  and  the  Duchess 
of  Leeds.  You  could  find  some  beautiful  por 
traits,  by  painters  such  as  Sir  Thomas  Law 
rence,  both  of  Baltimoreans  of  that  day  and  of 
their  friends  across  the  Atlantic,  friends 
highly  placed  and  famous,  in  the  deserted  and 
dusty  rooms  which  used  to  house  the  His 
torical  Society.  The  hillside  street  where  the 
rather  depressed-looking  mid-Victorian  build 
ing  of  the  society  stood  was  one  of  the  few  in 
Baltimore  which  seemed  forgotten  and  dilapi 
dated.  No  one  appeared  to  visit  the  pictures, 
almost  no  one  the  library,  where  a  few  readers 
lurked  in  the  gloom  to  which  you  penetrated 
to  see  an  admirable  portrait  of  Washington. 
To  the  romantically  inclined,  these  visitors 
there  could  be  no  others  than  the  last  repre 
sentatives  of  proud  but  decaying  Baltimorean 
families.  Indeed,  to  a  sympathetic  eye  the 
town  constantly  suggested,  quite  as  it  should, 
the  persistence  of  a  colonial  aristocracy. 

There  are  legends,  of  course,  as  there  are  in 
every  Southern  town,  illustrative  of  the  pride 
of  birth,  all  charming  stories,  but  mostly  of 
one  pattern.  There  is  one  house,  however,  of 
which  they  tell  you  tales  a  little  different.  It 
belonged  once  to  a  family  of  Portuguese  Jews, 
emigrants  from  a  country  where  their  race, 
more  than  anywhere  else  in  the  world,  traces 


140        American   Towns  and  People 

its  lineage  back  into  the  mists  of  immemorial 
antiquity.  They  were  strict  religionists,  even 
maintaining  a  private  synagogue  in  their 
house  near  the  very  street  where  the  Cardinal 
may  still  occasionally  be  seen  taking  the  air. 
They  were  proud  socially,  too,  and  were  re 
ceived  on  equal  terms  by  the  Gentile  aristoc 
racy.  Their  odd  pathetic  story  is  of  the 
gradual  dying  out  of  the  family.  They  were 
too  orthodox  to  marry  any  but  Jews,  they  were 
too  well-born  to  condescend  to  any  of  their 
fellow  religionists  in  this  country.  The 
daughters,  strictly  reared  in  the  family  re 
ligion  and  the  family  pride,  faded  one  by  one 
to  spinsterhood,  all  but  one  lovely  girl,  of 
whom  they  tell  the  romantic  tale  that  she  ran 
away — and  was  forever  forgotten.  For  a  time 
mesalliances  on  the  part  of  some  hot-blooded 
son  preserved  the  name.  Then  finally  it  was 
lost,  and  only  these  queer  memories  survive. 

The  numberless  antique-furniture  shops 
will,  naturally  enough,  provide  daily  tales  of 
an  impoverished  lady  just  on  the  point  of  part 
ing  with  exactly  the  piece  you  were  looking 
for.  And  though  you  may  have  a  moment's 
suspicion  that  the  whistling  and  hammering 
in  an  upper  room  come  from  a  cheerful  Ger 
man-American  workman  now  fabricating — 
and  "antiquating" — the  furniture  of  this  un- 


Baltimore  141 

happy  gentlewoman,  if  you  have  a  nice  nature, 
you  will  believe  in  her. 

It  is  paintings,  however,  the  sale  of  which 
is  oftenest  accompanied  by  all  the  eccentricity 
which  is  the  privilege  of  a  long-existent  so 
ciety.  There  was  a  Vandyck,  if  you  please,  to 
be  had  one  spring  at  the  best  ladies'  hair- 
dressing  establishment,  and  a  Murillo  on  sale 
in  the  parlor  of  an  employment  agency.  You 
might  believe  in  their  authenticity  or  not,  as 
you  liked,  but  there  they  were.  And  there  is 
even  more. 

There  was  to  be  found  in  one  of  the  least- 
frequented  corners  of  the  town  an  extensive 
collection  of  paintings,  which  had  not  spared 
the  Italian,  English,  Dutch,  French,  nor  Span 
ish  schools  of  art.  It  was  on  sale — after  a 
fashion.  That  is  to  say,  it  was  not  offered,  but 
to  any  one  who  might  casually  stumble  on  it, 
the  owner  would  confess,  with  some  hesitancy 
and  shyness,  that  she  would  like  to  turn  it 
into  money.  She  was  a  pleasant,  middle-aged 
lady,  dressed  in  a  fashion  that  somehow  made 
you  think  of  Godey's  Ladies'  Book.  She  was 
no  professed  connoisseur  of  art.  But  her 
father  was  fond  of  paintings,  and  these  "used 
to  be  about  the  house."  She  was  always  fond 
of  the  Murillo,  but  she  herself  liked  the  blue 
of  the  Titian  better  before  the  picture  was  re- 


142        American   Towns  and  People 

painted  by  that  Italian  from  New  York  who 
did  so  much  cleaning  up  for  her  father.  (As 
to  the  Titian  she  was  unmistakably  right.  As 
things  now  stand  the  version  of  the  same  sub 
ject  in  the  Uffizi  at  Florence  is  the  better 
painting.)  Still,  she  liked  the  pictures,  all  of 
them,  and  was  not  modern  enough  to  be 
troubled  by  any  doubts  as  to  their  authenticity. 
Indeed,  had  not  the  portrait  of  the  Dauphin 
of  France  been  recognized  as  such  by  several 
visitors  unmistakably  foreign,  and  possibly,  so 
she  suspected,  emissaries  of  the  French  gov 
ernment?  And  did  not  an  agent  of  the  Boston 
Museum  of  Art  once  obtain  access  to  the  col 
lection  disguised  as  a  steel-worker  on  strike? 
There  was  a  local  expert  of  some  skill  in  this 
matter  of  paintings,  and  it  was  once  delicately 
hinted  to  the  lady  of  the  collection  that  if  he 
were  to  examine  and  guarantee  her  pictures 
their  sale  might  be  easier.  She,  bless  her  for 
it!  drew  herself  up  delicately,  and  made  an 
answer  which  the  sentimental  tourist  himself 
could  never  have  invented  and  put  in  the 
mouth  of  any  proud  aristocrat. 

"I  scarcely  think  his  opinion  could  be  very 
valuable,"  she  objected.  "His  family  lived 
near  ours  for  many  years,  but  we  did  not  visit 
them." 

The  writer  did  not  wish  for  the  local  ex 
pert's  opinion,  either.  He  believed  in  the  au- 


Baltimore  143 

thenticity  of  every  canvas,  and  only  wished  he 
could  buy  them  all. 

The  new  Baltimore  risen  from  the  ashes  of 
1904  is  praiseworthy  but  not  picturesque. 
The  energy,  however,  and  the  progressiveness 
behind  it  are  an  essential  part  of  the  town's 
character.  They  had  the  first  water-works 
here,  the  first  lighting  by  gas,  the  first  tele 
graph,  and  the  first  great  railway.  And  it  is 
just  this  blend  of  the  enterprise  so  generally 
termed  Northern  with  the  easy  Southern  ac 
ceptance  of  the  pleasant  things  of  life  which 
gives  Baltimore  its  special  note.  These  and 
another  perfectly  individual  thing,  the  town's 
fashion  of  being  a  great  port  of  the  sea. 

Baltimore  is,  if  one  may  put  it  that  way,  the 
most  inland  of  places  at  which  you  may  take 
ship.  Though  through  at  least  half  the  town 
there  is  the  pervasive  sense  of  salt  water  and 
sea-borne  traffic,  it  is  not  of  the  Atlantic  that 
one  thinks.  It  is  true  that  Baltimore's  ships 
plow  the  waves  of  that  and  other,  remoter, 
oceans.  But  Baltimore  is  the  Chesapeake 
Bay's. 

There  is  a  pretty  little  park  called  Federal 
Hill — a  fortified  encampment  of  Northern 
soldiers  during  the  Civil  War,  now  a  pleasant 
sunny  promenade,  with  grass-plots,  trees,  and 
flowers  in  huge  stone  vases — from  which  you 
get  the  best  view  of  the  harbor,  the  Patapsco 


144        American   Towns  and  People 

River  stretching  away  in  many  miles  of  long, 
lazy  curves  toward  the  great  bay.  Below  you 
lie  sailing  craft,  and  down  where  the  channel 
deepens  you  can  catch  sight  of  the  funnels  of 
great  liners.  At  the  left  the  harbor  ends  in  a 
narrow  basin,  almost  enclosed  by  the  land,  and 
there  at  the  levee  the  bay  steamers  lie.  Every 
morning  and  evening  they  start,  big  boats  for 
Norfolk  and  lesser  craft  for  every  branch  of 
that  wonderful  great  bay,  for  every  broad 
river  that  penetrates  tide-water  Virginia  and 
the  eastern  and  western  shores  of  Maryland. 
Small,  battered,  puffing  antiquities  they  often 
are,  these  Chesapeake  steamers,  depositing  you 
finally  in  the  middle  of  the  night  or  at  dawn 
at  some  remote,  unknown  up-river  landing. 
But  only  by  such  irregular,  almost  illicit 
means  of  communication  can  you  reach  queer 
towns  forgotten  by  the  railways,  old  manor- 
houses  where  one  may  imagine  old  furniture, 
old  wine,  old-fashioned  hospitality,  and  old 
gentlefolk  to  exist  as  they  did  a  century  ago. 
Indeed,  one  may  imagine  anything  about  the 
Chesapeake  and  its  shores,  for  they  are  un 
known  and  forgotten.  Lately  the  richness  of 
the  agricultural  lands  has  begun  to  attract 
settlers  again.  Not  all  of  Baltimore's  immi 
gration  goes  West  now.  By  the  water-front 
you  may  occasionally  see  a  flat-bottomed,  snub- 
nosed  boat  starting,  loaded  with  a  whole 


Baltimore 

colony  of  German  farming  families,  for  St. 
Mary's  County  or  the  Eastern  Shore. 

The  levee,  alive  with  hurrying  passengers, 
and  colored  stevedores  and  roustabouts  mov 
ing  at  lesser  speed,  is  always  tempting  the 
sentimental  tourist  to  embark  upon  strange  ex 
plorations.  Who  would  not  see  the  Nanti- 
cote,  the  Choptank,  the  Wicomico  River? 
Who  does  not  long  for  the  Patuxent,  the  Poco- 
moke,  and  the  reaches  of  Tangier  Sound? 
Then  there  are  as  well  the  West  and  the 
Severn  rivers,  with  stately  residences  on  their 
green  banks,  and  Annapolis,  that  loveliest  of 
little  capitals.  There  are  boats  that  go  up 
that  broad  Potomac  to  Washington,  or  slowly 
mount  the  Rappahannock  and  the  York  rivers, 
taking  you  into  the  very  heart  of  that  forgotten 
Virginian  country.  And  always  there  is  in 
Baltimore  the  haunting  sense  of  this  great  con 
tributory  province,  land  of  unknown  possi 
bilities  and  fading  memories. 

Concretely,  it  is  the  great  bay  and  its  shores 
which  pile  Baltimore's  markets  high  with  the 
best  and  cheapest  food  our  country  knows. 
The  Chesapeake  itself  sends  "f  ruit  of  the  sea" 
— to  borrow  a  pleasant  Italian  phrase — of 
every  description,  and  from  a  very  early 
spring  to  a  late  autumn  the  market-gardens 
and  the  orchards  of  Anne  Arundel  and  St. 
Mary's,  counties  pleasantly  named,  pour  fruits 


146        American  Towns  and  People 

and  the  freshest  vegetables  from  a  real  horn  of 
plenty.  You  may  eat  Maryland  peaches  as 
early  as  June,  and  Maryland  strawberries  as 
late  as  October.  And  the  air  above  is  the 
chosen  haunt  of  game-birds  actually  eager  to 
be  roasted  over  the  fires  of  Baltimore.  The 
phrase  must  be  repeated  again,  "gastronomic 
center  of  America."  For  the  grateful  city 
quite  unreservedly  avails  itself  of  its  advan 
tages;  it  seems  to  be  in  a  perpetual  carnival 
of  marketing. 

It  is  not  merely  that  in  Baltimore's  clubs 
and  in  the  houses  of  her  aristocracy  is  "good 
cheer"  so  abundant  as  to  be  famous.  Every 
one  knows  the  tales  of  feasting,  and  has  heard 
the  legends  of  high  betting  on  races  between 
favorite  terrapin,  devoted  to  sport  during  the 
half-hour  before  they  enter  the  pot.  Rare  old 
wines,  incomparable  oysters,  snowy  crab- 
flakes,  ruddy  canvasbacks — all  these  help  to 
compose  a  picture  of  mellow  tone.  But  what 
is  even  pleasanter  to  contemplate  is  the  high- 
heaped  larder  of  the  humblest  Baltimorean. 

Of  course  it  is  not  possible  for  the  casual 
observer  to  be  behind  every  kitchen  stove  and 
under  every  dinner  table  in  so  large  a  town; 
he  must  trust  to  his  observations  in  the  market 
place  and  to  what  chance  acquaintances  of  the 
streets  and  shops  can  tell  him.  But  he  sees 
the  humblest  baskets  go  home  filled  to  over- 


Baltimore  147 

flowing  with  things  which  are  luxuries  else 
where.  He  knows  that  the  moderately  cir 
cumstanced  can  eat  soft-shell  crabs  by  the 
dozen,  and  the  really  impoverished  buy 
oysters  by  the  barrel.  He  will  spend  happy 
mornings  lounging  about  the  low,  rambling, 
picturesque  markets.  Here  at  dawn  country 
wagons  still  lumber  in  from  the  great  high 
roads  with  "garden-truck,"  and  in  the  late 
afternoon  go  home  with  tired  but  happy 
parties  of  marketers  in  rustic  clothes  and  real 
sunbonnets.  Here  is  a  never-ending,  cheerful 
confusion,  and  the  satisfying  sense  that  no  one 
is  going  hungry. 

Indeed,  Baltimore,  among  great  cities, 
would  seem  to  be  the  paradise  of  the  small  in 
come.  Nothing  is  perhaps  really  cheap  in 
this  country  nowadays,  but  by  comparison  life 
in  the  Maryland  metropolis  is  actually  within 
the  reach  of  all.  Supplies,  to  employ  the  term 
most  comprehensively,  are  abundant. 

In  all  Baltimore  there  can  scarcely  be  more 
than  a  few  score  "apartment  buildings"! 
This  statement  is  meant  literally,  not  as  a  pic 
turesque  exaggeration;  though  for  a  New- 
Yorker,  for  example,  it  is  only  by  a  far  flight 
of  the  imagination  that  such  a  condition 
of  things  can  be  conceived.  Baltimore  is, 
broadly  speaking,  still  a  city  of  small  houses, 
the  pleasantest  large  settlement  of  the  moder- 


148        American   Towns  and  People 

ately  rich  and  the  moderately  poor  in  our 
whole  country.  There  is  plenty  of  money  in 
Baltimore,  but  there  are  few  great  fortunes; 
the  plutocrats  do  it  there  on  a  modest  ten  mil 
lions,  and  in  something  considerably  less  pre 
tentious  than- a  New  York  or  Chicago  palace. 
The  standard  of  expenditure  is  low. 

On  a  modest  working-man's  income  you 
might  and  perhaps  may  still  live  in  a  delight 
ful  toy-like  little  red-brick  house  with  fresh 
paint,  green  shutters,  and  the  whitest  of  white 
steps.  Your  house  may  be  only  ten  feet  wide 
and  a  story  and  a  half  high,  but  it  is  a  digni 
fied,  self-respecting  habitation,  and  your  castle 
as  no  flat  can  ever  be.  Near  you,  in  whatever 
quarter  of  the  town  you  may  live,  are  probably 
pleasant  squares  planted  with  wide-branching 
trees,  or  streets  gay  with  grass-plots,  flower 
beds,  fountains,  statues.  Only  in  Baltimore 
do  such  boulevards  run  through  regions  of  the 
tiniest,  simplest  houses.  All  this,  if  you  are 
to  view  towns  with  some  wish  for  the  well- 
being  and  happiness  of  humanity,  makes 
Baltimore  a  really  comforting  place. 

There  is  still  more  matter  for  philosophiz 
ing  in  these  charming  slums.  To  the  senti 
mental  tourist  it  seems  impossible  to  overesti 
mate  the  artistic',  ethical,  and  sociological 
effect  of  the  white  doorstep,  which  in  both 
Philadelphia  and  Baltimore  is  the  most  prom- 


Baltimore  149 

inent  feature  of  the  urban  scene.  Ideally,  it 
is  of  marble;  failing  this,  of  fair  planks  of 
wood.  There  it  stands,  ready  to  be  scrubbed 
each  morning,  to  be  painted  each  spring.  It 
is  the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  thrift,  neat 
ness,  a  kind  of  guarantee  that  within,  too,  there 
are  cleanliness  and  all  the  domestic  virtues. 
Arid  happily  for  Baltimore,  with  the  excep 
tion  of  a  few  sinister  and  ill-omened  new 
streets  in  the  outskirts,  the  white  doorstep  is 
universal.  It  adorns  wealth.  It  mitigates 
poverty.  It  will  be  an  evil  day  for  Baltimore 
when  she  gives  up  this  emblem  of  her  civil 
ization. 

All  that  can  be  said  about  the  comfortable 
situation  of  the  Baltimorean  applies,  perhaps 
more  strikingly,  to  that  of  the  black  Balti 
morean.  There  is  no  intention  here  to  discuss 
the  South's  problem.  But  the  sight  of  streets 
of  good  three-story  houses  occupied,  in  appar 
ent  peace  and  prosperity,  by  the  Negroes,  who 
have  bought  a  whole  respectable  white  neigh 
borhood,  is  at  least  interesting  evidence  in  the 
case.  And  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  in 
dividual  quality  which  it  gives  Baltimore,  the 
money  the  Negroes  get  is  spent,  much  of  it,  in 
heightening  the  "local  color"  by  the  gayest 
garments. 

This  is  no  article  comprehensively  descrip 
tive.  If  it  were,  there  would  be  a  catalogue 


150        American   Towns  and  People 

of  old  buildings,  itineraries — to  parks  where 
grass-grown  earthworks  of  the  war  of  1812 
sleep  in  the  sunshine,  and  old  manor-houses 
that  are  now  pavilions  around  which  children 
play  and  idlers  like  the  sentimental  tourist 
lounge — and  innumerable  serviceable  hints 
for  the  stranger.  But  all  that  it  hopes  to  do 
is  to  stimulate  some  one's  curiosity,  to  detain 
some  passer-by,  and  perhaps  to  point  out  to 
some  native,  whose  eye  has  grown  dull  from 
custom,  what  a  delightful  town  he  lives  in. 
Indeed,  all  over  the  country  there  is  great  need 
that  justice  should  be  done  to  the  indigenous 
sights.  For  so  many  years  we  have  done 
ample  justice,  and  more,  to  Europe,  that  the 
moment  may  be  coming  to  pause  occasionally 
by  the  side  of  some  lovely  fragment  of  our 
own  past,  to  meditate  upon  the  fact  that  the 
unnoted  years  as  they  go  by  are  making  us  an 
old  country,  and  that  over  the  face  of  our  civil 
ization  is  creeping  a  richer,  more  romantic 
bloom.  Some  day  that  famous  traveler  from 
New  Zealand  will  be  prowling  among  our 
eighteenth  and  nineteenth  century  relics.  Is 
it  not  to  be  hoped  that  before  he  discovers  us 
we  may  discover  ourselves?  And  as  a  begin 
ning  must  be  made  somewhere,  why  not  at 
Baltimore,  sitting  at  once  modestly  and 
proudly  by  her  great  bay  of  Chesapeake,  and 
putting  pleasantly  before  you  her  long  history 


Baltimore  151 

of  an  American  town?  She  can  prove  to  any 
one  who  will  give  her  half  a  chance  what  a 
good,  a  dignified,  a  charming  thing  it  is  to  be 
an  American  town. 


Is  There  a  West? 

THE  Eastern  heart  dilates  immediately  on 
crossing  the  Mississippi.  You  have  been 
told  that  the  air  is  freer  and  fresher;  that  the 
old,  silly,  social  stiffness  is  to  drop  from  you 
in  the  warmth  of  an  indigenous  bonhomie; 
that  every  fellow-passenger  is  a  potential 
friend,  even  perhaps  for  life.  And  all  this 
really  is  so;  there  is  a  social  magic  at  play 
even  in  the  Pullman  car,  and  the  train,  flow 
ing  westward,  leaves  behind  it  a  black  cloud 
of  Eastern  inhibitions,  like  a  trail  of  smoke. 
Then  gradually  you  realize  that  the  new 
friends  who  have  so  unconventionally  and  so 
hastily  clasped  you  to  their  bosoms  are  all  also 
Easterners,  intoxicated  with  the  breeziness  of 
the  plains.  This  first  gives  you  pause. 

Some  cynic  of  the  smoking-room  tells  you 
that  Los  Angeles  is  the  metropolis  of  Iowa  and 
backs  up  his  paradox  by  figures  proving  that 
a  great  part  of  its  citizens  originate  under  the 
government  of  Des  Moines.  Once  your  sus 
picions  are  aroused  you  are,  even  during  the 
railway  journey,  intent  upon  anything  which 
might  serve  as  proof  that  there  really  is  a 

153 


154        American  Towns  and  People 

West.  These  indications  are  not  too  fre 
quent;  the  continent  was,  only  lately,  crossed 
with  so  poor  a  result  as  only  three  prairie-dogs 
sighted,  and  one  superannuated  cowboy  of 
about  eighty,  who  was  obviously  either  a  sur 
vival,  a  mere  museum  piece,  or  some  decrepit 
Easterner  galvanized  into  this  fancy-dress 
parade  by  his  memories  of  Buffalo  Bill.  The 
West  suddenly  becomes  shadowy  and  elusive. 

There  is,  of  course,  a  Middle  West;  it  is  as 
tonishing  to  find  that  it  now  extends  as  far 
as  Utah,  where  in  Salt  Lake  City  an  enter 
prising  junk  company  proclaims  itself  "the 
largest  in  the  Middle  West."  The  West,  if  it 
exists,  has  already  been  pushed  beyond  the 
High  Sierras.  It  only  remains  to  discover 
whether  or  not  it  has  been  shoved  into  the 
Pacific  and  safely  out  of  American  life. 

The  West,  in  the  old  sense  of  anything 
cruder,  less  civilized,  rougher  than  the  East, 
is  unquestionably  gone.  There  is  a  bathroom 
to  each  hotel  bedroom,  and  the  younger  Eng 
lish  poets  lecture  in  all  the  smallest  towns. 
It  takes  an  eagle's  eye  to  find  the  traditional 
lack  of  cultivation,  and  few  Easterners,  at  any 
rate,  have  eagles'  eyes.  This  question  of  "cul 
ture"  may  as  well  be  disposed  of  now  and 
flung  out  of  our  way ;  it  impedes  our  westward 
progress.  As  you  advance  toward  the  Pacific, 
"culture,"  if  anything,  only  takes  on  a  more 


Is  There  a  West?  155 

passionate,  almost  exacerbated  quality,  as 
though  its  possessors  were  determined  to  prove 
to  the  scoffing  how  brightly  the  piously 
guarded  flame  burns  on  the  sunset  altar  to  the 
muses.  For  decades  daughters  of  the  Cali- 
fornian  aristocracy  have  been  educated  in 
Paris  at  the  Convent  of  the  Sacred  Heart. 
The  French  note  is  indeed  firmly  struck  in  the 
West.  You  find  small  children,  who,  reared 
by  foreign  governesses,  are  more  at  ease  with 
the  Latin  languages  than  with  their  own. 
And,  to  choose  but  one  very  symptomatic  ex 
ample,  nowhere  did  the  temporary  cessation 
lately  in  L' Illustration  of  the  publication  of 
the  latest  plays  upon  the  Parisian  stage  cause 
greater  discomfort  and  emptiness  of  life  than 
in  California.  As  for  the  volumes  of  our 
latest  poets  and  vers-libristes,  they  lie  even 
thicker  upon  library  tables  in  California  than 
in  Kansas.  Universities  dot  the  plain,  and 
one  of  the  world's  great  libraries  is  soon  to  be 
among  the  orange-groves  near  Pasadena. 
Culture  is  certainly  not  treated  rough  near  the 
Pacific's  shore. 

Bret  Harte  was,  and  Alfred  Henry  Lewis. 
Their  West  is  gone.  Yet  there  remains  Cali 
fornia,  which,  though  certainly  not  Western 
as  we  once  used  the  word,  is  most  Californian. 
And  Californianism  is  something  as  amazing 
and  as  different  as  Westernism  can  ever  have 


156        American  Towns  and  People 

been  in  that  earlier  day.  It  is  a  subject  which 
would  well  repay  years  of  loving  and  intent 
study,  and  demands,  indeed,  space  and  some 
epic  gift  of  style,  yet  must  be  treated  here 
briefly  and  as  best  may  be.  The  gospel  of  im 
pressionism  is  in  the  end  the  only  defense  of 
any  alien  writer  attempting  to  describe  a  social 
landscape;  he  sets  the  thing  down  as  it  looks 
to  him. 

The  Californians,  in  spite  of  their  compara 
tive  hauteur  in  the  Pullman,  are  accessible 
enough.  Many  of  them,  even  on  the  transcon 
tinental  trip,  may  be  "met."  Indeed,  they 
travel  freely,  constantly,  and  easily  to  and  fro, 
making  nothing  of  four  nights  out  to  Chicago, 
and  training  their  infant  progeny,  as  may 
richly  be  observed  in  the  train,  to  the  same 
happy  facility  of  movement.  (It  should  be 
said,  parenthetically,  that  as  far  as  that  goes, 
all  over  the  country  motherhood  seems  merely 
to  incite  American  women  to  travel,  by  prefer 
ence  in  sleeping-cars.)  These  returning  Cali 
fornians  have  been  East  for  various  alleged 
purposes  of  business  or  pleasure.  But  it  is 
really  as  missionaries  that  they  have  gone,  to 
bring  the  bright  gospel  of  Californianism  to 
those  benighted  races  which  still  persist  in  liv 
ing  east  of  the  High  Sierras. 

The  universal  delusion  of  the  Pacific  slope 
is  that  California  is  heaven.  And  indeed 


Traces  of  old  Spain  have  a  winning,  half  pathetic  charm. 


Is  There  a  West?  157 

there  is  so  much  to  support  the  theory  that  it 
merits  calm  and  judicial  examination.  The 
beauty  of  the  Californian  landscape  is  indis 
putable  and  heavenly.  The  combination  of 
sea  and  mountains  with  the  adorable  valleys 
which  diversify  it  beneath  an  almost  perpetu 
ally  cloudless  sky,  the  great  woodland  regions, 
the  majesty  and  wonder  of  the  High  Sierras 
— all  these  are  unrivaled,  unmatched  by  any 
thing  in  our  land.  There  is  a  curious  Medi 
terranean  quality  in  the  country;  one  loses  one 
self  inevitably  in  golden  memories  of  Greece, 
of  Italy,  and  of  the  sunburned  coast  of  Spain. 
Something  classic,  too;  under  that  crystalline 
air  everything  is  sharply  modeled.  Marble 
temples  should  crown  the  hills,  and  in  the 
glades  nymphs  disport  themselves.  Claude 
should  have  lived  to  paint  this  land,  to  do  jus 
tice  to  its  serene  perfection. 

Serenity  is  perhaps  the  most  striking  char 
acteristic  of  the  Californian  scene — the  sun 
shines,  a  faint  breeze  blows  gently,  and  the 
hills  lie  in  the  clear  light  as  if  nothing  on  them 
had  stirred  since  they  were  first  chiseled  in 
brown  or  green.  There  is  nothing  wayward 
or  mysterious  about  the  landscape.  The  air 
is  too  crystalline  to  bear  upon  it  tangs  and 
odors.  You  have  moments  of  thinking  that 
there  is  no  air;  that  all  California  is  broad, 
kindly  vacancy  filled  with  sunlight  and  no 


158        American  Towns  and  People 

more.  To  the  sense  of  serenity  is  added  the 
feeling  of  remoteness.  In  certain  moods  the 
Californian  climate,  even  at  its  loveliest,  seems 
wholly  impersonal,  if  one  may  venture  upon 
that  expression. 

The  Californian  dooryards  everywhere  are 
a  riot  of  tropical  and  sub-tropical  blooming 
plants;  perhaps  nowhere  in  the  world  is  there 
anything  like  the  lushness  of  their  growth  and 
the  profusion  of  their  blossoming.  To  any 
flower-lover  these  are  gardens  in  paradise. 
Yet  in  no  sense  is  California  the  tropics. 
Even  when  the  days  are  hot  the  nights  are 
most  often  crisp  and  cold.  There  is  no 
languor  in  the  air.  The  night  breeze  does  not 
whisper  of  the  dark  magic  of  the  South,  of 
hot  passions  and  unbridled  pleasures.  It  is 
not,  in  short,  the  Californian  zephyrs  which 
fill  the  Californian  divorce  courts.  Instead, 
they  seem  clean,  properly  sterilized,  even  cold- 
storage  airs. 

The  Pacific,  too,  a  calm,  cold  ocean  not 
much  fretted  by  traffic,  adds  its  curious  note 
of  aloofness.  It  sends  forth  fogs,  but  some 
how  they  carry  no  hint  of  salt.  And  in  days 
of  sunshine  when  it  sparkles  sapphire  blue  it 
seems  somehow  to  exhale  no  breath.  You 
never  "smell  the  sea"  as  by  the  Atlantic's 
verge,  and,  though  you  well  know  that  rotting 
seaweed  gives  forth  that  odor,  you  miss  it  on 


Is  There  a  West?  159 

this  western  shore.  The  oceans  you  have 
known  seem  playful  children,  by  turns  gay  and 
irritable,  by  comparison  with  this  monstrous, 
lovely,  inhuman  sea.  If  you  are  by  fate  pre 
destined  to  Californianism,  you  find  in  this 
eternal  changeless  quality  a  suggestion  that 
happiness,  too,  may  be  everlasting,  and  that 
behind  the  mountains  you  have  left  forever 
change  and  whim  and  anxiety  and  all  the  re 
sponsibilities  of  the  past. 

The  first  impression  of  California  must  be 
for  every  one  a  sense  of  release,  whether  it  be 
merely  from  the  winter  climate  of  Iowa  or 
from  the  carking  cares  of  the  eastern  seaboard. 
Every  one  is,  as  it  were,  under  a  new  flag*  and 
a  new  name,  ready  to  forget  the  past  and  keep 
clear  eyes  fixed  only  on  the  future.  Here 
every  earthly  care  may  be  sloughed  off,  except, 
perhaps,  the  pangs  of  love.  And  as  for  physi 
cal  ills,  these  should  easily  be  disposed  of. 
On  every  hand  there  are  faith  healers  of  all 
varieties,  divine  healers,  nature  healers,  and 
child  healers,  these  last  an  agreeable  novelty 
ranging  from  ten  to  fourteen  years  in  age,  but 
competent,  no  doubt,  as  only  an  American 
child  can  be. 

The  Californian  population  has  been  re 
cruited  from  all  parts  of  the  country  and, 
though  happy  in  this  new  environment,  still 
bears  traces  of  its  origin.  A  Boston  lady, 


160        American  Towns  and  People 

lately  viewing  a  parade  in  honor  of  the  sover 
eigns  of  Belgium,  said  it  made  her  feel  at 
home  to  "see  all  them  silk  hats";  yet  she  was 
doubtless  a  converted  and  ardent  Californian, 
finding  this  in  her  old  age  a  pleasant  shelter 
from  the  east  wind. 

One  of  the  pleasantest  things  about  Cali 
fornia  (perhaps,  after  its  natural  beauty)  is 
the  simplicity  of  life  so  widely  prevalent  there. 
Of  course  there  are  plenty  of  enormously  rich 
people,  and  quite  enough  extraordinarily  gay 
and  fashionable.  Yet  in  the  end  it  is  the  para 
dise  of  the  common  people  and  the  small  in 
come.  Even  when  the  immigrant  to  Cali 
fornia  comes  with  work  in  his  mind  it  is  so 
often  some  sublimated  and  poetic  industry  like 
orange-growing  which  has  lured;  the  culture 
of  that  golden  fruit,  with  Mexicans  or  Japa 
nese  doing  the  manual  labor,  is  an  ideal,  easy, 
and  Arcadian  occupation  for  any  one. 

The  bungalow  should  be  the  emblem  of 
California,  it  represents  the  state  at  its  sim 
plest  and  most  engaging  best.  It  is  the  great 
triumph  of  native  art,  triumphantly  ugly 
sometimes,  sometimes  triumphantly  gay  and 
coquettish.  When  the  architects  of  other 
states,  less  bungalowish,  need  models  they  visit 
the  Pacific  coast  for  inspiration.  Indeed,  the 
Californian  bungalow  is  the  prettiest  imagi 
nable  proof  that  there  is  a  modest  and  simple 


Is  There  a  West?  161 

and  self-respecting  life  to  be  led  in  Arcadian 
surroundings,  embowered  in  bloom,  and  that 
the  servantless  home  is  both  decent  and  agree 
able. 

In  this  matter  of  the  elimination  of  the  ser 
vant — and  so  of  the  servant  problem — if  one 
may  trust  the  report  of  Californian  house 
wives,  the  state  has  gone  further  than  others  in 
the  direction  desired  by  all  advanced  and 
radical  advocates  of  the  suppression  of  class 
distinctions.  Broadly  speaking,  they  will  tell 
you,  there  are  no  servants  in  California.  It  is 
hard  to  believe  of  the  palaces,  though  you  hear 
yarns  of  mid-Western  millionaires  assisting 
their  wives  with  the  dishes  or  sweeping  out  the 
gorgeous  corridors  of  their  castles.  In  the 
two-room  bungalow  (three  rooms  make  it  al 
most  a  house)  a  servant  would  only  be  in  the 
way. 

How  can  one  fear  any  future  social  convul 
sions  once  one  has  learned  how  delightful  it  is 
to  eat  in  the  kitchen,  in  a  charming  little  stall 
with  benches,  like  those  in  the  Old  Cheshire 
Cheese  in  London,  only  now  trig  and  gay 
with  white  and  colored  paints.  Every  most 
modern  device  for  the  harnessing  of  gas, 
water,  and  the  electric  current  you  are  apt  to 
find  in  the  tiniest  bungalow  temple  of  the 
simple  life.  Why  dislike  washing  the  clothes 
when  a  machine  does  it?  What  is  ironing  but 


162        American  Towns  and  People 

play  when  the  ironing-board  lets  down  from 
the  wall  at  the  touch  of  a  button  and  an  elec 
tric  iron,  ever  hot,  stands  temptingly  to  your 
hand? 

Of  course  there  are  plenty  of  rich  people  in 
California — the  sight-seeing  automobiles  take 
you  past  miles  of  "homes,"  all  the  seats  of  lum 
ber,  paper,  packing,  chewing-gum,  or  sawdust 
"kings,"  as  we  so  delightfully  term  all  our  suc 
cessful  business  men  in  America.  But  the 
really  exciting  and  significant  thing  is  to  go 
past  the  hundreds  of  miles  of  "homes"  of  those 
humble  people  who  are  not  and  never  will  be 
"kings,"  never,  perhaps,  be  masters  of  any 
thing  but  their  own  souls,  but  are  leading  a 
serene,  neighborly,  American  existence.  It  is 
in  this  mood  that  the  bungalow  seems  the  solu 
tion  of  all  the  difficulties  of  even  a  revolution 
ized  future.  California  seems  somehow  to 
offer  every  tired  human  creature  from  that 
humming,  tormented  East  a  refuge  and  a  new 
chance. 

The  simplicity  of  life  pervades  the  whole 
social  structure.  There  are  in  the  Californian 
cities  large  general-market  stores  on  the  main 
shopping  streets,  just  next  the  jewelers'  and  the 
picture-palaces  and  the  milliners'  modes  de 
Paris.  There  is  an  enormous  deal  of  market 
ing  in  person,  and,  incredible  as  it  may  sound 
to  Eastern  readers,  there  appears  to  be  some  at- 


Is  There  a  West?  163 

tempt  to  attain  low  prices  in  the  belief  that 
they  will  attract  Californians  as  high  prices  do 
New-Yorkers.  After  doing  your  marketing 
you  may  repair  to  dine,  at  about  five-thirty  or 
a  leisurely  and  fashionable  six,  to  a  cafeteria, 
where  again  self-service  is  the  desired  goal. 
These  establishments  are  enormous  and  in  that 
vast,  flashing  elegance  of  style  which  they  have 
borrowed  from  the  hotel  "office."  There  are 
luxurious  waiting-rooms  where  you  keep  ren 
dezvous  with  the  party  with  whom  you  are  to 
cafeteer.  Bands  blare  away,  and  in  certain 
advanced  futuristic  establishments  there  are 
balconies  with  easy  chairs  where  even  those 
not  dining  are  welcome  to  sit  and  enjoy  the  art 
of  music. 

Nature-loving  is  of  course  a  cheap  and 
simple  pleasure  anywhere,  but  it  peculiarly 
fits  into  the  scheme  of  Western  frugality  and 
soulfulness.  Of  course  California  has  no 
monopoly;  even  in  central  Illinois  bands  of 
nature-lovers  now  go  forth  on  Saturday  after 
noons  to  caress  trees.  But  probably  never  be 
fore  in  the  same  area  were  so  many  almost  pro 
fessional  devotees  of  the  Great  Mother  as  on 
the  Pacific  slope.  There  is,  of  course,  a  vast 
deal  of  rather  windy  talk  upon  the  subject, 
and  a  strong  disposition  to  dilute  it  with  a 
vague  religiosity.  Even  rich  and  fashionable 
ladies  at  Santa  Barbara  are  apt  to  yearn  a  good 


164        American  Towns  and  People 

deal  over  the  beauty  of  the  landscape,  spiritu 
ally  to  fondle  Rincon,  the  local  mountain, 
and,  in  short,  to  feel  that  this  close  contact 
with  nature  is  making  both  soul  and  body  very 
lovely. 

But  there  is  a  side  simpler  and  more  engag 
ing.  There  is  an  extraordinary  proportion  of 
the  inhabitants  of  California  which  knows  the 
wild  places — they  are  always  astonishingly 
near  the  centers  of  population — and  has  been 
near  the  mysteries.  The  coming  of  the  good 
road  and  the  bad  car  has  facilitated  this.  The 
migration  in  the  summer  to  the  High  Sierras 
of  thousands  of  family  camping-parties,  in 
overloaded  vehicles  of  the  many  kinds  which 
may  be  generically  grouped  as  tin  cars,  is  an 
epic  of  democracy.  They  live  long  weeks 
really  close  to  that  so  famous  heart;  a  young 
lady  was  heard  in  the  autumn  complaining 
that  she  couldn't  seem  to  cook  at  the  sea-level 
— she  had  learned  the  art  during  a  long  sum 
mer  twelve  thousand  feet  up,  where  water 
boils  at  a  lower  temperature  and  is  much  less 
hot!  Camping  and  all  the  pioneer  crafts  are 
still  a  real  part  of  the  life  of  a  true  Calif ornian 
from  childhood  on. 

Even  week-ends  and  Sundays  are  used  in 
pleasant  outdoor  expeditions.  In  spite  of  the 
automobile,  the  Californians  can  still  walk. 
Of  course  they  do  not  use  such  an  old- 


Is  There  a  West?  165 

fashioned  expression;  they  "hike";  this  new 
word,  as  Boy  Scouts  have  already  found, 
makes  a  thing  that  had  grown  dull  a  real 
pleasure.  The  railway  and  trolley  stations 
late  Saturday  afternoon  are  an  amazing  sight. 
They  swarm  with  boys  and  girls  in  "hiking" 
costumes  of  khaki.  The  young  ladies  are  all 
in  trim,  tight  knickers,  to  be  distinguished 
from  the  young  men  only  by  their  superior 
shape,  by  their  beauty  of  countenance,  and 
by  the  students'  caps  in  bright  colored 
velvet  which  surmount  them.  There  are  un 
doubtedly  more  young  ladies  in  knickers  in 
California  than  anywhere  else  in  the  world. 
In  some  cases  there  is  a  woman  in  skirts  along; 
this  strange  raiment  possibly  indicates  the 
chaperon,  though  more  often  it  would  appear 
that  the  expedition  is  undertaken  in  that  Ar 
cadian  lack  of  guile  which  is  still  so  strong  a 
national  characteristic.  Did  Daphnis  and 
Chloe  "hike"?  The  young  ladies  are  almost 
always,  by  a  mysterious  but  welcome  dispen 
sation  of  Providence,  small  and  exquisitely 
pretty — indeed,  they  look  like  moving-picture 
actresses,  which  is,  of  course,  the  highest  Cali- 
fornian  praise.  And  the  whole  scene  has  a 
quality  of  musical  comedy  which  is  gay  and 
invigorating. 

Indeed,  while  we  touch  this  point,  it  may 
be  said  that  Californian  costume,  more  par- 


166        American  Towns  and  People 

ticularly  that  of  the  male,  is  very  free  from 
any  conservative  or  traditional  restraint.  It 
may  be  that  in  the  south  the  mode  is  affected 
by  the  presence  of  a  great  number  of  actors — 
a  race  always  sprightly  and  debonair  in  dress. 
For  example,  it  is  probable  that  in  Los 
Angeles  there  are  more  black-and-white- 
check  suits  per  square  mile  than  in  any  other 
city  in  the  world.  Sartorial  imagination 
seems  positively  unbridled;  what  a  French 
tailor  would,  so  accurately,  call  costumes  de 
fantaisie  are  excessively  prevalent,  and  all  that 
can  be  done  with  belts  and  waists  and  curves 
and  gussets  and  gores  and  strapped  and  plaited 
waistcoats  is  done.  Fits  are,  to  display  the 
perfect  male  figure,  alluringly  snug — a  lead 
ing  Eastern  authority  says  that  the  impression 
he  receives  is  that  every  one  is  wearing  the  suit 
made  for  little  brother!  The  note,  not  uni 
versally  but  still  most  commonly  struck,  is  not 
that  of  stern  simplicity.  It  is  actually  a  fact 
that  in  one  great  Californian  city  a  perfectly 
plain  white  dress  shirt  is  not  to  be  purchased 
in  any  reputable  men's  furnishing  shop,  the 
mode  being  for  a  touch  of  embroidery  or  plait 
ing  or  pique.  Dashing  fellows,  these  Cali- 
fornians! 

As  bungalows  and  dress  and  the  whole 
manner  of  Californian  life  indicate  an  eye 
wholly  fixed  on  the  future,  so  does  the  Cali- 


Is  There  a  West?  167 

fornian  language.  English  as  she  used  to  be 
spoken  is  in  process  of  being  scrapped  in  Cali 
fornia — or  perhaps  it  is  only  that  institutions 
which  never  existed  before  demand  names  as 
fresh  as  themselves.  "Cafeteria"  has,  of 
course,  now  a  nation-wide  use,  but  there  is  also 
an  "Eateria"  and,  in  one  instance,  welling 
straight  from  our  strange,  turgid,  national 
fount  of  humor,  a  "Palace  of  Fine  Eats." 
"Grocerteria"  is  very  much  in  use  everywhere, 
for  a  shop  where  "self-service"  is  in  vogue. 
"Shoeitorium"  and  "Shinerium"  are  delight 
ful  and  easily  understood,  as  is  "Vegeteria" 
for  a  wayside  vegetable-stall.  "Hometeria" 
as  the  designation  of  a  real-estate  office  is  per 
haps  fancy  spun  rather  fine  and  flung  rather 
far.  But  for  a  stroke  of  individual  inventive 
genius  it  would  be  hard  to  beat  "Rabbi- 
torium,"  the  mart  for  these  succulent  animals. 
The  language  never  grows  rusty  out  West. 

The  Spanish  past  of  California,  is,  of 
course,  much  advertised  and  carefully  con 
served.  The  little  towns  and  the  string  of 
missions  were  perhaps  not  very  important  in 
those  early  days;  they  must  have  seemed  re 
mote  and  provincial  to  the  proud  City  of 
Mexico.  And  the  relics  which  one  so  ten 
derly  and  piously  visits  are,  as  things  go  in  the 
world,  relatively  unimportant — in  Spain  itself 
one  would  perhaps  not  cross  a  very  broad 


168        American   Towns  and  People 

street  to  see  them.  But  here  in  America  we 
are  hungry  for  the  past,  and  the  Californian 
traces  of  old  Spain  have  a  very  winning,  half- 
pathetic  charm.  They  complete  the  romantic 
illusion  that  these  are  Mediterranean  lands. 

And  modern  California  has  done  every 
thing  to  keep  the  old  Spanish  province  every 
where  in  mind.  There  are  "mission"  plays 
and  "mission"  groceries  and  "mission"  garages 
and,  as  all  America  knows  to  its  sorrow,  mis 
sion  furniture.  That  famous  and  delightful 
novel,  Ramona,  has  become  an  authentic  part 
of  California  history  by  now,  and  every  event 
has  been  given  a  local  habitat  so  that  you  can 
make  pilgrimages,  pretty  and  romantic,  to 
every  scene  of  the  heroine's  happiness  and  of 
her  final  tragedy— a  charming  tribute  to  the 
art  of  fiction.  The  town  and  street  names 
are  so  many  of  them  reminiscent  of  that  early 
day,  and  the  Californians,  slipshod  in  their 
English  sometimes,  are  astonishingly  careful 
of  their  Spanish,  undaunted  by  such  names  as 
La  Jolla,  for  example,  and  dealing  com 
petently  with  the  aspirate  j  and  the  liquid 
double  1.  The  whole  system  of  nomenclature 
makes  for  romance,  and  the  presence,  as  one 
goes  toward  the  south  and  the  Mexican  bor 
der,  of  increasing  numbers  of  a  darker,  more 
picturesque  race  deepens  the  impression 


Is  There  a  West?  169 

which  one  has  at  moments  that  one  is  in  a 
foreign  land. 

The  Chinese  and  Japanese  do  that,  too. 
No  discussion  shall  here  ensue  of  that  Asiatic 
problem.  Not  as  economist,  but  as  idle  tour 
ist,  may  one  be  grateful  for  such  memories  as 
that  of  a  carnation-field  in  bloom  tended  by 
a  half-dozen  pretty  little  Japanese  women, 
bending  caressingly  over  the  lovely  brilliant 
flowers ! 

This,  however,  is  a  digression  from  Span- 
ishness,  and  the  point  to  be  made  was  that 
earthquakes  and  speculative  builders  have  left 
little  in  California  of  the  period  between  the 
mission  and  the  bungalow.  There  is  one  lady 
in  southern  California  who  is  famous  because 
her  grandchildren  are  being  brought  up  in  the 
house  where  she  herself  was  born!  There  is, 
in  short,  nothing  mid-Victorian  in  California, 
unless  it  be  possibly  some  aspects  of  the 
famous  San  Franciscan  vice — in  that  city  the 
rows  of  cabinets  partlcullers  which  adorn  even 
the  humblest  oyster-house  inevitably  make  one 
think  of  the  Third  Empire  in  Paris  and  the 
Bal  Mabille. 

Reluctantly  shall  some  space  be  here  given 
to  this  same  question  of  Californian  morals. 
It  is  amusing  how  cultivated  and  dashing  and 
intelligent  it  is  always  thought  in  America 


170        American  Towns  and  People 

to  attack  towns  as  being  puritanical.  Los 
Angeles  was  once  termed  "chemically  pure," 
and  it  still  reels  from  the  blow.  The  lowan 
population  would  like  it  to  be  well  understood 
that  life  has  been  considerably  jazzed  up  since 
its  transference  to  the  coast.  San  Francisco 
has,  on  the  other  hand,  been  perhaps  too  much 
advertised  by  its  loving  but  injudicious 
friends,  for  it  is  quite  plain  to  even  the  tour 
ist's  eye  that,  instead  of  being  the  Isle  of 
Cytherea,  the  place  is  congested  with  good 
and  respectable  women  (often  excessively 
pretty  and  smart),  and  that  it  goes  its  way,  as 
a  busy,  lively  city  should,  with  not  much  more 
nor  much  less  of  undue  gayety  than  usually 
falls  to  the  lot  of  towns  of  its  size.  Yet  up 
and  down  the  length  of  the  state  you  hear 
philosophical  thinkers  asserting  that  Cali 
fornia  saps  the  moral  sense. 

(Here,  indeed,  one  had  best  not  be  too  sure 
that  the  wish  is  not  father  to  the  thought. 
There  are  ladies  who  have  not  succeeded  in 
being  very  bad  in  the  East  and,  arriving  at 
full  bloom  and  California  about  the  same 
time,  have  come  with  the  hope  of  misconduct 
springing  eternal  in  their  very  human  breasts.) 

It  is  true  that  the  Californian  divorce  courts 
are  by  way  of  surpassing  old  days  in  Reno,  and 
that  life  in  many  a  community  proceeds  with 
great  freedom  and  vivacity;  that  one-piece 


A  superannuated  cowboy  of  about  eighty. 


Is   There  a  West?  171 

bathing-suits  are  the  rule,  and  that,  to  judge 
by  the  photographs  which  embellish  the  chro- 
nique  scandaleuse  of  the  local  newspapers, 
neither  age  nor  plainness  offers  any  bar  to  the 
liveliness  of  ladies.  But  at  the  risk  of  defend 
ing  Californians  even  against  themselves,  it 
must  be  said  if  the  state  saps  the  moral  sense 
it  is  only  in  so  far  as  it  weakens  all  feeling  of 
responsibility  and  of  dependence  upon  the 
traditions  of  the  past. 

The  visitor  to  California  will  inevitably  ex 
perience  moods  in  which  the  whole  state  will 
seem  to  him  populated  merely  by  people  who 
have  migrated  thither  to  avoid  responsibility. 
He  will  forget  the  industries  and  the  rich  agri 
culture  and  consider  the  whole  state  as  an  idle 
community,  unproductive  and  non-creative. 
He  will  in  imagination  see  the  tributary 
stream  of  money  from  the  working  East  cross 
the  mountains  and  break  into  pretty,  many- 
colored  spray  over  the  Californian  lotos  gar 
dens.  He  will  wonder  what  would  happen  to 
the  West  if  the  machinery  of  capitalism  ceased 
to  divert  this  life-giving  golden  flow.  He 
will  revolt  at  what  seems  the  sterile  happiness 
of  a  whole  people. 

It  is  in  such  moods  that  one  believes  the 
worst  stories  of  the  slowness  with  which  Cali 
fornia  awakened  to  the  call  of  the  Great  War, 
forgetting  how,  at  home  in  the  East,  one  was 


172        American   Towns  and  People 

bitterly  impatient  at  the  country's  lethargy 
and  neglecting,  perhaps,  to  inform  oneself  of 
the  splendid  achievements  of  the  aroused  Cali 
fornia.  Yet  the  mood,  dissipated,  will  return, 
of  longing,  even  in  the  Californian  sunshine 
and  beauty,  for  the  cloudier  skies  of  an  older, 
struggling,  suffering  world. 

Reference  has  been  made  earlier  to  the  prev 
alent  delusion  that  California  is  heaven.  And 
here  something  must  be  said,  in  all  rever 
ence  it  is  hoped,  about  heaven.  The  Cali 
fornian  resemblance  is  to  that  place  of  the 
earlier  theologies  devoted  wholly  to  the  mystic 
and  rather  static  pleasures  of  worship  and 
praise,  which  most  of  the  vigorous  modern 
churches  reject  in  favor  of  an  ideal  of  more 
activity,  more  strain,  more  likeness  to  the  life 
of  this  world,  though  on  a  higher  spiritual 
plane. 

A  Californian  might,  however,  well  retort 
that  the  higher  spiritual  plane  already  exists 
by  the  Pacific's  edge.  Indeed,  the  soil  of  the 
state  is  as  fertile  of  religions  as  that  of  great 
Asia.  And,  indeed,  all  the  Asiatic  cults  find 
a  welcome  there.  In  grand  and  beautiful 
temples  or  in  dull  little  frame  houses  on  side 
streets  where  a  simple  home-made  signboard 
gives  modest  publicity  to  a  new  religion  de 
vised  by  the  inhabitant  himself,  all  sorts  and 
all  doctrines  find  some  shelter.  From  a  Sun- 


Is  There  a  West?  173 

day  newspaper,  which  only  partially  reflects 
the  possibilities  of  a  Californian  Sabbath 
morning,  is  copied  out  a  list  of  services  which 
includes,  besides  the  more  orthodox  names, 
New  Thought,  Higher  Thought,  Metaphysi 
cal  Theosophy  of  several  different  schools, 
Pillar  of  Fire,  Old  Time  Orthodoxy,  God  is 
Female,  and,  though  it  is  more  a  cultural  ac 
tivity  than  a  worship  of  the  Deity,  Raw  Food. 
By  the  western  ocean  all  these  new  religionists 
gather  to  await  the  coming  of  a  new  day. 
Some  of  them  believe  that  from  the  deep 
bosom  of  the  Pacific  will  arise  a  new  con 
tinent,  like  the  lost  Atlantis.  When  this  hap 
pens  they  wrill  be  there  to  step  still  farther  into 
the  sunset,  and  to  take  possession  of  a  newer 
and  better  California. 

There  is  more  "soul"  in  California  than 
there  has  ev^r  been  before  in  the  world's  his 
tory.  A  tailor  advertises:  "All  men  wearing 
tailor-made  clothes  should  insist  on  getting  a 
soul  with  them.  Every  garment  made  in  our 
shops,  including  coat,  vest,  and  trousers,  is 
provided  with  a  real  soul,  the  something  that 
lives  forever  and  the  something  that  is  not  ob 
tainable  everywhere" ! 

All  these  western  religions  are  religions  of 
optimism;  it  is  only  natural  that  they  should 
thrive  best  in  these  remote,  untroubled  airs. 
Their  practitioners  are  relentlessly  cheerful; 


174        American   Towns  and  People 

you  can  tell  that  almost  professional  smile  and 
that  voice  dripping  with  honey  even  in  the 
crowded  street-car.  Their  lilac  crystal  domes 
stand  in  fantastic  loveliness  above  the  western 
sea.  Why,  in  a  land  where  the  present  pre 
sents  no  cares  and  problems,  should  not  the  hu 
man  heart  concern  itself  with  some  future  life? 
Is  California  itself  not  the  future  life?  We 
come  inevitably  to  what  we  earlier  called  her 
delusion.  Perhaps  the  Californian  serenity 
is  what  the  world  is  nowr  trying  for.  In  that 
case  our  West  is  a  great  mile-stone  on  the 
highroad  of  the  human  race.  And  when  hu 
man  cares  are  adjusted,  then,  as  now,  her  hills 
will  turn  green  and  brown  and  then  green 
again.  And  her  sunshine  will  never  have 
ceased  to  flood  her  great  calm  spaces.  And 
her  giant  sequoias  will  have  increased  in  girth 
an  inch  or  two —  Perhaps  in  time  that  fabled 
continent  will  rise  from  the  Pacific's  bosom. 
But  until  a  great  deal  is  known  about  it  most 
of  us  will  prefer  California. 


The  Hotel  Guest 

A  MERICA  invented  the  hotel  and  is 
-L±  still  inordinately  proud  of  it.  Europe 
through  the  centuries  produced,  it  is  true,  re 
freshment  for  man  and  beast,  and  comfortable 
phrases  about  taking  one's  ease  in  one's  inn. 
But  it  remained  for  our  country  to  contrive  an 
establishment  where,  if  we  may  venture  upon 
an  illogical  but  perhaps  understandable  ex 
pression,  one  took  not  only  one's  own  ease  but 
every  one  else's;  where  privacy  having  been, 
as  far  as  possible,  eliminated,  the  hotel  guest 
lived  in  a  pleasant  sociable  democratic  welter 
of  all  the  classes  of  the  community. 

In  one  of  Long  Island's  prettiest  coun 
try  palaces,  surrounded  by  formal  gardens, 
clipped  hedges,  espaliered  pear-trees,  and 
pools  made  sapphire  blue  by  the  newest  chem 
icals,  filled  with  the  loot  of  Europe,  the  main 
living-room  has  a  tessellated  marble  floor  mel 
lowed  with  age  which  the  owner  whimsically 
announces  was  secured  not  in  some  foreign 
nobleman's  residence,  but  at  the  demolition  of 
the  metropolis's  once  most  famous  hotel.  The 

175 


176        American  Towns  and  People 

imaginative  guest  cannot  tread  it  unmoved ;  in 
the  dim  hours  of  the  night  he  can  hear  the 
ghosts  of  America's  great  days  stirring  upon 
what  was  once  its  noble  expanse,  seeking  their 
favorite  chairs  or  asking  the  clerk  for  writing- 
paper.  If  a  simple  symbol  for  America  is 
sought,  for  that  American  America  which 
sprang  into  being  with  the  Revolution,  came 
triumphant  and  reunited  through  the  Civil 
War  and  the  Reconstruction  days  and  has 
lately  uncovered  and  fanned  into  flame  the  an 
cient  fires  which  still  burned  at  her  heart, 
teaching  her  new  foreign-born  sons  her  old 
love  of  liberty,  perhaps  nothing  better  can  be 
found  than  the  old  hotel  office  grandiose,  al 
most  epic  in  qualities  with  its  stretch  of 
checkered  black-and-white  marble  pavement 
upon  which  America  congregated.  It  was 
what  the  Forum  perhaps  was  to  Rome,  and  if 
majestic  memories  of  the  lobby  of  the  Grand 
Hotel  in  Cincinnati,  seen  in  an  impressionable 
childhood,  are  at  all  to  be  trusted,  about  the 
Forum's  size. 

The  European  mind  is  still  completely  be 
wildered  by  the  free-and-easy  and  unques 
tioned  use  of  the  hotel  and  all  its  conveniences 
by  thousands  who  dispense  with  the  formality 
of  lodging  there  or  contributing  in  any  finan 
cial  way  to  its  maintenance.  A  Saturday  of 
this  last  winter  the  office  of  one  of  New  York's 


The  Hotel  Guest  177 

most  expensive  and  exclusive  hotels  became  so 
congested  that  hoarse-voiced  uniformed  at 
tendants  kept  shouting,  "Keep  moving,"  as  if 
they  were  policemen  in  charge  of  proletarian 
crowds  in  the  street.  At  such  a  moment  ac 
tual  guests  of  a  hotel  are  intruding  aliens.  In 
spite  of  all  modern  improvements  and  all  pre 
tensions  to  affording  an  elegant  privacy  for  its 
guests,  the  American  hotel  remains  to-day  the 
prey  of  the  public,  its  office  the  public's  lounge 
and  rendezvous. 

There  have  been  attempts  to  keep  out  of  the 
best  hotels,  not  so  much  the  local  public  as  the 
inhabitants  of  cheaper  hostelries.  In  spite  of 
these,  the  frugal  visitor  to  New  York  tradi 
tionally  "put  up"  at  a  small  hotel  on  a  side 
street  and  picked  his  teeth  on  the  old  Astor 
House  steps.  And  at  the  summer  and  winter 
resorts  to  this  day,  guests  of  the  boarding- 
house  calmly  repair  in  bands  to  pass  the  even 
ing  on  the  verandas  of  the  best  hotels,  and  it 
is  practically  impossible  to  say  them  nay,  so 
firmly  fixed  in  our  national  mind  is  the  idea 
that  every  part  of  a  hotel  not  actually  locked 
up  is  public  property. 

To  lounge  in  a  first-class  office  confers  a 
certain  position.  Even  in  the  most  modern 
hotels  young  gentleman  socially  ambitious  are 
said  to  gain  at  little  expense  a  most  desirable 
publicity  by  having  themselves  "paged"  (de- 


178        American  Towns  and  People 

lightful  word)  in  the  public  rooms  and  restau 
rants  at  the  most  crowded  hours. 

Another  of  the  common  people's  inalienable 
rights  is  to  know  who  is  staying  in  a  hotel, 
hence  the  pitiless  publicity  of  the  register. 
This  volume  is  indeed  at  times  the  center  of 
hotel  social  life,  its  perusal  the  daily  pleasure 
of  hundreds.  In  the  earlier  days,  wits  found 
their  opportunity  here.  At  Trenton  Falls,  a 
once  famous  but  now  almost  forgotten  resort, 
this  passage  in  the  register  was  much  liked : 

John  Graham  and  servant. 

G.  Squires,  wife  and  two  babies.  No  ser 
vant,  owing  to  the  hardness  of  the  times. 

G.  W.  Douglas  and  servant.  No  wife  and 
babies,  owing  to  the  hardness  of  the  times. 

Even  though  you  neglect  the  opportunity 
to  turn  a  pretty  phrase,  perhaps  the  only  way 
to  make  sure  that  your  name  is  down  correctly 
is  to  write  it  yourself.  Memories  come  back 
to  all  of  us  of  strange  mistakes  in  foreign  ho 
tels.  And  it  is  well  to  remember  the  dignified 
and  respectable  Bostonian  writer  on  musical 
subjects  whose  arrival  at  Tunis  in  North 
Africa  was  recorded  in  the  little  local  Gazette 
des  Etrangers  et  du  Casino  as  that  of  Le  Mar 
quis  A — .  de  Boston  et  sa  Suite. 

The  Ladies'  Parlor,  alas,  has  gone,  to  make 


The  Hotel  Guest  179 

way  for  the  cabaret  grill-room  where  the  la 
dies  may  smoke  and  drink  pink  cocktails;  but 
for  the  better  part  of  that  great  nineteenth  cen 
tury  it  was  a  prominent  and  agreeable  feature 
of  hotel  life.  All  the  foreign  visitors  of  that 
earlier  ante-bellum  period — whose  inevitable 
books  of  impressions  are  an  ever  more  fasci 
nating  store  of  information  as  to  the  manners 
and  customs  we  derive  from — were  by  turns 
horrified  and  bedazzled  by  the  amiable  and 
accessible  society  in  the  hotel  parlors.  Below, 
in  the  office,  the  rough  male  inhabitants  of 
the  Republic  swore  and  chewed  and  spat,  but 
above,  American  ladies,  beautifully  dressed  in 
Parisian  frocks,  held  a  decorus  but  animated 
court.  In  Europe,  no  such  public  reception- 
rooms  existed,  no  such  nightly  assemblage  of 
guests  inclined  to  sociability.  In  Europe,  no 
families  lived  permanently  in  hotels,  and  this 
publicity  of  home  life  added,  for  the  stranger, 
to  the  wonder  of  the  experience. 

Miss  Fredrika  Bremer,  a  Swedish  lady  fa 
mous  enough  in  her  da*y,  but  now  quite  for 
gotten,  may  be  quoted  to  advantage  on  the 
parlors  of  the  Astor  House: 

Magnificent  drawing-rooms  with  furniture 
in  velours,  with  mirrors  and  gilding,  brilliant 
with  magnificent  gas-lighted  chandeliers  and 
other  grandeur  stand  open  in  every  story  of 


180        American   Towns  and  People 

the  house  for  ladies  and  gentlemen  who  live 
here  or  are  visiting  here,  to  converse  or  to  rest, 
talking  together  on  soft  and  splendid  sofas  or 
arm-chairs,  fanning  themselves,  and  just  as  if 
they  had  nothing  else  to  do  in  the  world  than 
to  make  themselves  agreeable  to  one  another. 
Scarcely  can  a  lady  rise  than  immediately  a 
gentleman  is  at  hand  to  offer  her  his  arm. 

The  last  touch  is  admirable.  This  is  in 
1849,  in  what  might  perhaps  be  thought  a 
roguish  period  in  America's  manners,  yet  it 
is  humbly  submitted  that  the  picture  of  the 
Ladies'  Parlor  of  the  Astor  House  compares 
favorably  with  that  of  any  salon  of  that  eight 
eenth  century  in  France,  the  period  which  is 
said  to  have  been  for  the  privileged  classes 
the  most  agreeable  this  planet  has  yet  pro 
vided.  Even  the  most  belle  marquise  could 
have  hoped  for  nothing  more  courteous  than  a 
gentleman  immediately  at  hand  to  offer  his 
arm  almost  before  she  could  rise. 

This  is  perhaps  the  point  to  meet  any  pos 
sible  challenge  as  to  the  importance  of  such 
facts  and  such  philosophizing.  Here  is  not 
history  stately  and  proud,  only  some  pleasant 
odds  and  ends  which  may  help  to  make  her 
great  pages  more  comprehensive  and  more  hu 
man.  European  history  has  many  collateral 
volumes  of  gossip  and  agreeable  minor  infor- 


The  Hotel  Guest  181 

mation.  So,  too,  has  our  earlier  Colonial  pe 
riod.  But  there  is  a  stretch  of  this  nineteenth 
century  to  know  which  better  and  more  fa 
miliarly  would  make  Americans  more  at  home 
in  their  own  continent,  would  certainly  enrich 
the  tone  of  our  national  culture,  and  would 
perhaps  even  heighten  our  love  of  country. 
Nihil  Americanum  rnihl  alienum — a  serious 
plea  is  made  here  that  even  the  times  of  the 
now  despised  house  with  a  cupola  deserve  our 
affectionate,  if  half-humorous  attention;  that 
indeed  a  record  of  any  of  our  manners  and 
customs,  such  as  is  planned  in  this  series  of 
scattered  articles  is,  though  both  light  and 
humble,  still  a  genuine  contribution,  at  least 
memoirs,  to  serve  for  the  writing  of  our  na 
tional  history. 

While  there  is  still  time,  every  one  should 
see  the  Ladies'  Parlor  of  a  certain  famous 
hotel  at  Saratoga,  still  coquettish  with  gilt 
mirrors  and  ragged  blue  brocade,  and  should 
make  the  pilgrimage  to  an  equally  famous  inn 
at  Niagara  Falls,  if  only  to  see  the  fat  old 
leather-bound  registers  in  which  honeymoon 
couples  with  imagination  still  occasionally 
hunt  to  see  where  father  and  mother,  or 
more  probably  grandfather  and  grandmother, 
signed  the  book  on  their  wedding-trip — where 
they,  too,  may  see  when  Abraham  Lincoln 
brought  his  bride  to  the  Falls.  Here  is  his- 


182        American  Towns  and  People 

tory  intimate  and  sweet,  the  grave  muse  ready 
to  make  friends  with  any  idle  sentimental  tour 
ist. 

The  colonial  inn,  though  pleasant  with 
memories  of  travelers  by  coach  and  of  solitary 
and  gallant  horsemen,  is  still  perfectly  in  the 
English  tradition.  Revolutionary  days  when 
French  officers  visited  us  as  they  do  now,  are 
fuller  of  delightful  anecdote.  The  Marquis 
de  Chastellux,  on  leaving  a  New  Jersey  inn, 
writes : 

I  observed  to  Mr.  Courtheath  that  if  he 
made  me  pay  for  being  waited  on  by  his  pretty 
sister,  it  was  by  much  too  little,  but  if  only  for 
lodging  and  supper,  it  was  a  great  deal. 

They  had  a  way  with  them,  did  those 
Frenchmen!  It  was  said  of  the  young  Prince 
de  Broglie,  traveling  about  that  time,  that  he 
"managed  very  well  by  kissing  the  landladies, 
so  he  got  clean  sheets  and  no  other  traveler 
to  sleep  with  him!"  It  is  interesting  to  look 
over  General  Putnam's  bill  at  the  Cromweirs 
Head  Tavern  and  notice  the  curious  distribu 
tion  of  his  expenses.  His  board  cost  him  two 
pounds  eight  shillings  for  the  week,  his  liquor 
sixteen  shillings,  and  his  washing  ninepence! 

All  this  European  character  disappeared  in 
the  first  few  decades  of  the  new  century.  In 


The  Hotel  Guest  183 

that  dark  age  the  Simon-pure  American  hotel 
with  elegant  Ladies'  Parlors,  huge  offices, 
shining  cuspidors,  and  rocking-chairs  on  the 
sidewalk,  came  mysteriously  into  being,  and 
the  foreign  traveler  was  inevitably  transported 
with  amazement,  often  with  horror,  at  living 
in  daily  association  with  three  or  four  hun 
dred  people.  One  European  traveler  asserted : 
"Americans  love  crowds.  There  are  even 
more  twins  born  there  than  anywhere  else." 
Size  indeed  developed  early.  At  Trenton 
Falls,  N.  P.  Willis  saw  with  amazement  two 
thousand  wild  pigeons  fattening  for  the  hotel. 
The  hotels  in  towns  were  larger  than  anything 
the  world  had  ever  known  before;  hotels  in 
such  resorts  as  Saratoga  were  monstrous,  un 
believable.  Turmoil  came,  too ;  a  large  hotel 
is  described  as  one  of  the  class  "entitled  to 
keep  a  gong,"  and  as  early  as  the  'fifties,  bands 
played  loudly  in  the  Cape  May  dining-rooms, 
and  hundreds  of  black  waiters  marched  in 
with  each  course  in  military  order.  There  is 
at  Cape  May  a  Homeric  legend  of  a  battle 
royal  between  white  gentlemen  and  black 
waiters  on  strike! 

The  foreign  visitors  expressed  horror  often 
enough,  but  the  legend  of  American  uncouth- 
ness  was,  quite  obviously,  exaggerated  to  give 
spice  to  their  narratives.  In  1843  tne  famous 
English  actor,  Macready,  records  that  he  went 


184        American   Towns  and  People 

with  Longfellow  and  the  Willises  to  dine  at 
what  he  quaintly  terms  the  "Ladies7  Ordi 
nary"  of  a  New  York  hotel. 

"I  looked  for  the  eaters  with  knives,"  he 
ingenuously  and  honestly  says,  "but  detected 


none." 


Mrs.  Trollope,  whose  attacks  on  us  roused 
such  bitterness,  is  to-day  somewhat  discred 
ited.  We  must  simply  decline,  for  example, 
to  believe  that  in  her  day  it  was  considered 
so  indelicate  for  the  sexes  to  sit  together  on  the 
grass,  that  picnics  were  impossible.  Indeed, 
do  we  not  know  from  equally  reliable  wit 
nesses  that  at  this  same  period  at  the  New 
Jersey,  seaside  a  gentleman  asked  a  lady, 
"May  I  have  the  pleasure  of  taking  a  bath 
with  you?"  as  he  would  have  solicited  the 
favor  of  a  dance,  and  that  in  the  waves  the 
sexes  mixed  with  a  freedom  which  makes  the 
story  of  the  contemporaneous  squeamishness 
about  a  picnic  quite  improbable? 

In  this  mysterious  period  of  development, 
early  in  the  century,  a  new  hotel  language  was 
invented,  and  strange,  inexplicable  terms  had 
birth. 

"Why  do  you  call  me  Front?"  asks  the  new 
bell-boy  in  the  farce.  "Why  don't  you  call 
me  Grimes?" 

"I  don't  know,"  the  clerk  candidly  answers. 
"It's  alwavs  done  in  first-class  hotels." 


The  old  hotel  office  was  what  the  forum  perhaps  was  to  Bvome. 


The  Hotel  Guest  185 

A  traveler  naturally  must  grow  excited 
about  something  and  find  fault  with  some  for 
eign  custom.  How  else  is  he  to  know  that  he 
is  abroad?  Of  this  importance,  and  no  more, 
are  the  anecdotes  of  visitors  recoiling  before 
the  awful  sight  of  boiled  eggs  "mashed  in  a 
glass"  and  the  remark  of  Thackeray  after  try 
ing  his  first  American  oyster,  that  he  "felt  as 
if  he  had  swallowed  a  baby." 

There  is  no  intention  here  of  going  into  the 
long  chapter  of  American  difficulties  with 
European  hotels.  We  have  been  as  violent 
over  the  folly  of  the  French  and  Italians  in 
not  serving  an  American  breakfast  as  ever 
their  travelers  have  been  over  our  eccentrici 
ties.  Any  one  who  has  tried  to  play  courier  to 
an  inveterately  American  friend  can  under 
stand  how  difficult  it  is,  say,  in  a  remote  Brit 
tany  hamlet,  to  obtain  Smithson's  Breakfast 
Food,  or  whatever  it  is  which  adorns  the  home 
table  in  Kansas  City,  and  how  hard  it  is  to 
induce  a  landlady  at  Vallombrosa  to  fry  the 
morning  beefsteak  to  a  turn.  On  the  whole, 
foreigners  visiting  us  have  borne  the  reversal 
of  their  immemorial  habits  with  fortitude, 
even  good  nature. 

Instead  of  cause  for  horror,  the  travelers, 
it  is  evident,  often  found  a  strange.,  exotic 
charm  in  the  American  hotel.  The  waiters 
were  invariably  black,  the  chambermaids  in- 


1 86        'American  Towns  and  People 

evitably  Irish.  On  the  sidewalks  in  front  of 
New  York  hotels,  Cuban  planters  rocked. 
The  society  in  the  Ladies'  Parlors  sparkled. 
In  the  dining-rooms  Gargantuan  menus  of 
strange  foods  tempted  and  satiated  every  ap 
petite.  Ice-water  clinked  and  indigestion 
stalked.  Pale,  precocious  children  compe 
tently  ordering  their  own  dinner  tore  soft- 
shell  crabs  limb  from  limb,  gnawed  green 
corn,  and  consumed  limitless  ice-cream.  It 
was  indeed  the  New  World. 

Until  Mr.  Hoover,  quite  lately,  took  the 
matter  in  hand,  almost  nothing  had  ever 
checked  our  national  extravagance,  and  the 
hotel,  as  perhaps  the  freest  flowering  of  our 
institutions,  excelled  in  wastefulness,  both  for 
the  guests  and  for  the  casual  public.  In  some 
Florida  hotels,  up  to  a  comparatively  recent 
period,  great  baskets  of  oranges  for  free  eat 
ing  stood  in  the  offices,  while  in  the  early  an 
nals  of  Wisconsin  you  may  read  of  a  custom 
of  serving  free  whisky  to  all  guests,  more 
especially  if  the  house  was  so  crowded  that 
many  of  them  had  to  be  put  to  bed  upon  the 
floor — a  custom  that  will  become  more  golden 
in  memory  as  the  prohibition  years  go  by. 

Even  to-day,  when  time  has  somewhat 
curbed  us,  the  ideal  of  the  American  hotel  is 
perhaps  a  famous  establishment  in  the  country 
near  New  York  where  you  pay  a  fixed  sum  a 


The  Hotel  Guest  187 

day  (fixed  out  of  the  reach  of  most  of  us) ,  and 
the  hotel  provides  everything  you  can  think  of 
to  want — cigars,  champagne,  riding-horses, 
motors,  fishing  parties,  picnics  in  the  moun 
tain-top,  dances,  private  theatricals,  and  prob 
ably  even  that  monstrosity,  a  feather  bed,  if  it 
suited  your  convenience. 

The  constant  outcry  of  the  American  tourist 
abroad  used  to  be  not  so- much  against  high 
prices  as  against  the  itemized  bill.  Mr.  Nat 
Goodwin,  in  the  farce,  said,  "No,  this  is  not 
my  hotel — yet;  I  am  buying  it  on  the  instal 
ment  plan."  The  charge  for  candles  in  Eu 
ropean  hotels  did  more  to  promote  interna 
tional  discord  than  almost  anything  else  that 
ever  happened  abroad.  At  home  in  America 
we  are  happy  only  when  soap  is  provided  and 
talcum  powder  and  wash-cloths  to  take  away, 
and  sample  bottles  of  mouth  wash  and  tiny 
tubes  of  cold  cream,  when  the  supply  of  towels 
is  limitless  and  the  hot  water  gushes  like  the 
Great  Geyser  of  the  Yellowstone.  At  table, 
our  ideal  is  to  stoke  up  between  courses  on 
celery  and  olives  and  salted  nuts,  and  discover 
peppermint  candy  hiding  beside  the  finger- 
bowl,  and  to  find  nothing  of  all  this  on  the 
bill. 

And  yet,  in  the  end,  in  spite  of  itself,  the 
American  public  was  betrayed.  It  was  found 
that  hotel  life  could  really  be  made  more  ex- 


1 88        American   Towns  and  People 

pensive  by  charging  for  rooms  and  meals 
separately;  the  old  ideal  was  sacrificed  to  this 
greater  and  more  alluring  extravagance.  You 
began  to  pay  for  your  room  alone  more  than 
in  the  grand  old  days  of  the  "two,  three,  or 
four  dollar  a  day  house"  you  paid  for  it  plus 
three  banquets  a  day,  and  at  meal-times  to  sub 
ject  yourself  to  the  extortions  of  an  a  la  carte 
restaurant  with  alleged  French  waiters.  Of 
course,  it  was  possible  to  use  this  new  system 
for  economy — there  were  people  from  the 
Waldorf  breakfasting  at  Childs' — but  in  the 
main  it  served  extravagance. 

There  was  a  transition  period  when  the  two 
plans  sometimes  existed  alongside  in  the  same 
hotel.  There  is  a  story,  if  not  true,  at  least 
agreeably  contrived,  of  Mr.  Israel  Zangwill 
registering  in  Chicago  and  being  astonished  by 
the  clerk's  asking  him,  sharply: 

"European  or  American?" 

"I'm  European,"  he  replied,  "but  I  don't 
see  what  business  that  is  of  yours!" 

Gradually,  however,  the  so-called  Eu 
ropean  plan  (in  the  early  idiom  it  was  often 
pronounced  with  the  accent  on  the  second 
syllable)  became  almost  universal  in  city 
hotels  of  standing.  Even  the  least  refined 
commercial  traveler  is  now  revolted  by  the  un- 
New-Yorkishness  of  the  old  American  plan, 
which  is  now  surviving  vigorously  only  in 


The  Hotel  Guest  189 

country  and  resort  hotels  (and  the  visitor  to 
our  crowded  watering  places  knows  that  even 
there  its  hold  is  precarious). 

If  the  hotel  is,  as  it  were,  the  barometer  and 
thermometer  of  national  civilization,  it  is  the 
commercial  traveler  who  most  often  takes  the 
readings.  Let  no  one  underestimate  his  im 
portance  in  the  nation's  structure.  In  Charles 
H.  Hoyt's  early  farce,  "A  Bunch  of  Keys," 
Dolly,  complaining,  draws  a  most  racily 
American  picture.  "Ever  since  the  hotel  was 
closed/'  she  says,  "I've  had  a  most  miserable 
time.  There's  been  no  drummers  along,  and 
I've  had  nobody  to  flirt  with  but  brakemen." 
She  would  be  glad,  were  she  in  a  newer  play, 
to  recognize  how  her  friend  has  improved  the 
hotel.  The  drummer  is  the  hotels'  best  regu 
lar  patron.  He  supports  them  when  the 
traveler  for  pleasure  cannot  be  counted  upon. 
He  knows  metropolitan  comfort  and  is  willing 
to  pay  for  it,  or  at  least  to  put  it  on  the  ex 
pense  account.  Some  of  the  new  hotels  in  the 
new  South  frankly  acknowledge  their  in 
debtedness.  "The  ho-tel  the  traveling-man 
made  possible,"  is  the  phrase  which  calls  for 
our  gratitude.  We  must  not  think  of  him 
lightly;  even  in  the  hotel  bedroom  the  free 
copy  of  the  Bible  has  been  provided  by  the 
"Gideons,"  an  association  of  piously  inclined 
gentlemen  of  the  road.  In  England  the 


190        American   Towns  and  People 

"commercial  room"  may  still  exist  for  the 
segregation  of  the  fraternity,  and  it  may  be 
that  in  hotels  in  small  Italian  towns  female 
travelers  are  still  given  private  dining-rooms 
rather  than  that  they  should  be  exposed  to  as 
sociation  with  the  commercial  travelers  in  the 
main  sala  da  pranzo.  But  in  America,  the 
most  delicately  nurtured  women  gladly  follow 
them  to  the  grill-rooms  and  lounges  on  the 
New  York  plan  which  they  have  demanded 
everywhere.  Tablets  honoring  the  drummer 
should  indeed  be  placed  on  the  walls  of  every 
new  and  comfortable  hotel. 

The  process  of  civilizing  the  hotel  wilder 
ness  occasionally  leads  the  most  sophisticated 
products  of  New  York  and  Paris  to  the  lone 
liest  frontier  posts.  In  a  central  New  York 
hotel,  there  was  a  few  years  ago  a  French  head 
waiter  of  that  engaging  suavity  which  makes 
life's  troubles  melt  away.  Asked  one  day  at 
lunch  to  convey  to  the  chef  a  compliment  upon 
a  really  notable  supreme  de  sole,  Marguery, 
he  sighed  delicately  and  then  said : 

"Yes,  he  is  an  expert  and  admirable  man. 
But  he  will  not  last  long  as  a  cook.  What  will 
you?"  he  continued  with  a  little  weary  shrug. 
"How  can  he  sustain  his  art  among  a  clientele 
which  really  only  wishes  a  planked  beef 
steak?" 

How  can  a  head  waiter  last,  we  may  well 


The  Hotel  Guest  191 

ask,  whose  advice  is  sought  only  to  decide  per 
haps  between  French-fried  and  hashed-brown 
potatoes  to  go  with  the  ham  and  eggs? 
Martyrs  each  to  the  cause  of  American  good 
living!  The  story  of  a  Dieppe  boy  comes  into 
the  mind,  too,  who  made  a  failure  as  manager 
of  an  ambitious  French  restaurant  in  a  pre 
tentious  new  hotel  in  an  obstinately  ham-and- 
egg  town,  whose  pretty  young  wife  was  made 
love  to  by  a  local  auto-tire  manufacturer,  and 
who  finally  put  a  bullet  through  his  head,  dis 
couraged,  beaten,  and  lonely  for  the  pretty  gay 
town  where  pleasant  little  old  hotels  went  on 
in  the  good  traditional  way,  and  where  a 
small,  sure,  happy  life  would  have  been  his 
had  he  been  content  to  stay  at  home  by  the 
blue  French  sea.  This  is  probably  the  only 
record  which  will  ever  be  made  of  Raoul. 
There  is  a  mother  in  France  who  remembers 
him,  if  she  be  still  alive.  It  would  be  pleas 
ant  if  she  could  for  a  moment  believe  that 
America  was  grateful  for  the  small  service  her 
boy  tried  so  hard  to  do  for  his  adopted  coun 
try. 

The  transformation  which  the  motor-car 
has  effected  in  the  hotels  of  the  American 
country  is  already  a  twice  and  thrice  told  tale, 
and  yet  no  bird's-eye  view  of  the  hotel  guest 
can  omit  the  sight  of  him  and  his  womankind 
in  strange  masks  and  hideous  wrappings  ap- 


192        American   Towns  and  People 

preaching  Ye  Olde  Inne  and  demanding 
rooms  with  bath.  More  wayside  taverns  have 
been  plumbed  into  a  new  existence  than  any 
one  could  ever  have  believed  Colonial  traffic 
could  have  sustained.  As  for  historic  mem 
ories,  they  are  a  cloud,  like  dust  along  an  un- 
oiled  dirt  road.  One  can  motor  for  weeks  and 
always  lie  the  night  where  Washington  once 
slept.  Our  national  past  has  surged  back,  and 
what  with  "innes"  and  tea-rooms,  quaintness 
is  in  danger  of  becoming  a  pest. 

There  are,  however,  certain  developments 
in  this  new  roadside  hotel-keeping  which 
should  be  set  down  by  any  serious  student  of 
our  manners.  The  amateur  landlady,  an  ar 
tistic  gentlewoman  in  a  sage-green  woolen 
gown,  cut  low  over  a  neck  artistically  hung 
with  amber  beads,  is  something  which  only 
the  Anglo-Saxon  world  can  produce.  She 
tends  to  serve  food  in  green  bowls  and  there  is 
nothing  in  the  animal  or  vegetable  kingdom 
which  with  the  aid  of  a  bottle  of  mayonnaise 
she  cannot  whip  into  a  salad.  Her  passion  is 
for  daintiness,  in  which  is  comprised,  thank 
God,  cleanliness.  She  has  a  pretty  taste  in  all 
the  arts,  and  indeed  a  stay  under  her  roof  can 
not  fail  to  be  mentally  and  spiritually  tonic. 
She  is  an  agreeable,  if  faintly  comic,  figure; 
we  should  value  her  as  the  impersonation  of 
a  passionate  revolt  against  the  dullness,  the 


The  Hotel  Guest  193 

unpicturesqueness  of  the  old  American  coun 
try  hotel  of  the  last  half  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury.  And  our  new  American  quaintness, 
brought  about  by  skilled  architects,  trained 
landscape-gardeners,  and  sophisticated  in 
terior  decorators  can  successfully  challenge 
comparison  with  any  of  the  Old  World's 
cleverness. 

Novelists  and  playwrights  have  for  some 
time  encouraged  the  hotel  run  by  an  eccentric 
local  "character."  After  Frank  Stockton  told 
us  of  the  Squirrel  Inn,  some  enterprising  per 
son  immediately  started  one  so  named,  and 
now  every  one  who  saw  the  play  in  New  York 
last  winter  wants  to  go  this  summer  to  a  hotel 
kept  by  "LightninV  We  are  tolerant  of 
fantastic  landlords;  there  is  a  Floridian  hotel 
where  the  host  plays  Chopin  on  the  parlor 
piano  while  a  soviet  of  servants  and  guests 
runs  the  establishment. 

In  the  new  town  hotels,  the  guest  asks  not 
quaintness,  but  a  kind  of  communal  grandeur. 
The  new  establishments  are  fabulous.  They 
provide  special  floors  for  bachelors,  and,  for 
ladies  traveling  alone,  a  chaperon-matron. 
They  have  club-rooms  for  Spanish-Ameri 
cans,  Indian  chefs  for  the  curries,  stenogra 
phers,  notary  publics,  Turkish  baths,  safe-de 
posit  vaults  for  the  guests,  their  own  artesian 
wells,  manicurists  among  whom  Helen  of 


194        American   Towns  and  People 

Troy  would  be  unnoticed,  roof  gardens,  sub 
terranean  dancing-rooms,  cigarettes  for  ladies, 
red-tipped  so  that  the  lip  rouge  may  not  rub 
off  and  show,  private  detectives,  house  osteo 
paths  and  divorce  lawyers,  gymnasiums  on  the 
roof,  playgrounds  for  children,  swimming 
baths,  jazz  and  symphony  bands,  near-bars 
and  soda-fountains,  their  own  valets  and 
tailors,  ladies'  maids,  packers,  ticket  agents 
and  scalpers,  blackmailers,  night  guides,  and 
almost  everything  except  surgeons7  rooms  for 
major  operations  and  wet  nurses  for  children 
born  in  the  hotel.  Once  safely  within  the 
doors  of  a  modern  hotel,  there  is  really  no  need 
of  one's  ever  leaving  it,  except  for  the  last  sad 
rites,  and  possibly  the  hotel  could  take  care  of 
even  these.  The  hotel  is  the  epitome  of  the 
nation,  even  to  the  elaborate  system  of  mirrors 
and  electric  signals  cunningly  hidden  beneath 
the  velvet  carpets  by  means  of  which  the  es 
timable  matrons  on  each  floor  are  enabled  to 
supervise  and  preserve  the  morals  of  the  na 
tion. 

We  went  through  a  period  when  it  was  no 
longer  quite  "the  thing"  to  live  in  a  hotel. 
But  now  that  domestic  servants  in  private 
houses  are  rapidly  disappearing,  if  not  already 
gone,  it  appears  likely  that  the  hotel  is  about  to 
engulf  the  American  world.  In  New  York 
last  winter,  new  hotels  were  opened  at  a  rate 


The  Hotel  Guest  195 

which  increased  the  available  bedrooms  at 
some  preposterous  rate,  perhaps  a  thousand  a 
week,  and  yet  the  town  every  day  was  filled 
with  frenzied,  despairing  people  vainly  hunt 
ing  for  places  to  lay  their  heads  at  night. 
Waiters  struck,  imperial-mannered  waitresses 
took  their  place,  and  yet  the  one  universal  de 
sire  in  New  York  seemed  to  be  to  live  in  a 
hotel.  When  we  consider,  as  indeed  we  had 
best  do,  the  possible  complete  passing  away  in 
the  not  distant  future  of  all  private  and 
domestic  service,  this  rush  of  a  whole  people 
to  hotels  becomes  epic  in  quality  and  signifi 
cance.  American  hotels  have  always  put  un 
believable  splendor  within  reach  of  the  whole 
community.  And  as  every  change  prepared 
by  our  radicals  and  revolutionists  is  in  a  sense 
an  extension  of  this  principle,  the  hotel  is  per 
haps  the  symbol  of  the  future,  a  people's 
palace  in  the  office  of  which  the  proletariat 
takes  its  ease. 

Meanwhile,  counter  to  this  great  principle 
of  democracy,  hotels,  like  their  guests,  have 
developed  social  position  and  snobbishness. 
Nowhere  so  much  as  in  America  is  the  hotel 
a  man — or,  more  particularly,  a  woman — 
stays  at  taken  as  a  kind  of  public  manifesto  of 
his  or  her  social  pretensions.  There  are  still 
left  in  the  land  a  few  hotels  dedicated  to  the 
service  of  the  old-fashioned,  elderly  rich 


196        American  Towns  and  People 

where  decorous,  hushed  service  and  meals  on 
the  old  American  plan  may  still  be  obtained. 
Only  recently  a  visiting  Englishman,  who  by 
some  strange  chance  had  gone  to  one  of  them, 
asserted  that  he  left  because  in  the  whole  hotel 
there  was  no  place  where  his  post-prandial 
cup  of  coffee  and  cigarette  might  be  enjoyed 
together.  In  the  dining-room  he  might  have 
his  cup  of  coffee,  but  he  could  not  smoke.  In 
the  lobby  he  could  smoke,  but  could  not  be 
served  coffee. 

In  the  newest  hotels,  of  course,  ash-receivers 
are  hung  over  the  edge  of  the  bath-tubs,  and 
the  general  tone  is  well  in  advance  of  even  the 
future,  though,  of  course,  women  are  per 
mitted  not  to  smoke.  In  such  establishments 
the  tone  of  fashion  is  very  aggravated,  and  it 
is  curious  to  notice  how  nearly  impossible  it 
is  for  many  of  the  patrons  to  endure  life  in 
any  hotel  less  the  mode.  In  the  case  of  the 
most  successfully  snobbish  of  the  metropolis 
caravansaries  the  situation  at  the  outbreak  of 
the  Great  War  was  curious.  Although  the 
frock-coated  young  gentlemen  at  the  desk  were 
hurriedly  transformed  into  Swiss,  many  of  the 
waiters  suddenly  became  Belgians  and  the 
chambermaids  irreconcilable  Alsatians,  the 
boche  tone  was  there  and  it  became  one's  duty 
to  forsake  the  hotel.  For  a  brief  period  it  lost 
a  little  patronage.  Ambassadors  of  the  Al- 


The  Hotel  Guest  197 

lied  powers  were  forced  to  go  elsewhere. 
And  yet,  so  desperate  was  the  habit  of  regard 
ing  it  as  the  only  truly  fashionable  place  to 
stay  that  many  of  the  most  passionate  pro- 
Ententists  remained  in  spite  of  everything.  It 
was  asserted  that  the  hotel  was  filled  with  Ger 
man  spies  and  that  valets  from  the  Wilhelm- 
strasse  went  through  your  luggage  regularly 
every  day.  One  martyred  American  gentle 
man  was  forced  to  confide  the  packet  of  his 
personal  letters  from  British  royalty  to  the 
care  of  a  lady  who  put  them  in  her  country 
safe-deposit  vault.  And  yet,  in  spite  of  perse 
cution,  it  did  not  occur  to  him  to  change 
hotels. 

What  does  this  prove  except  what  passion 
ate  devotion  a  good  hotel  may  inspire  in  its 
guests,  and,  indeed,  all  the  members  of  the 
surrounding  community?  A  very  prominent 
New-Yorker  got  his  start  in  the  world  when 
in  Chicago  he  wrote  for  a  local  paper  a  thril 
ling  account  of  how  one  bitter  January  day 
the  clerk  at  the  newest  hotel  had  met  the  com 
plaint  of  an  Englishman  who  could  not  get 
the  water  in  his  morning  tub  cold  enough  to 
be  invigorating,  by  having  great  blocks  of  ice 
placed  in  it.  The  story  was  conceivably  not 
true,  since  water  drawn  in  mid-winter  from 
Lake  Michigan  might  un-iced  well  bring  a 
glow  to  the  most  vigorous  British  body,  but 


198        American  Towns  and  People 

all  Chicago  was  delighted  at  this  humorous 
and  fantastic  statement  of  how  an  American 
hotel  stood  ready  to  provide  whatever  the 
guest  demanded.  It  is  no  bad  idea  for 
patriots  to  rally  round  the  American  hotel. 
It  has  been  one  of  our  country's  great  con 
tributions  to  the  modern  world. 


The  High  Kingdom  of  the  Movies 

ENRAPTURED  visitors  to  our  Pacific 
coast  sometimes  wonder  why  a  kindly 
Providence  sheds  upon  that  land  eternal  sun 
shine.  There  is,  however,  but  one  answer  to 
that  question — so  that  you  can  shoot  the  mov 
ing  pictures  there.  Of  course  you  can  shoot 
the  pictures  elsewhere,  even  in  New  York, 
though  the  weather  often  shows  an  incompre 
hensible  disregard  of  what  is  really  due  them. 
But  many  other  things  happen  in  New  York; 
indeed,  one  is  often  in  danger  of  forgetting 
what  is  of  real  importance  in  the  world. 
This  is  not  satire;  it  is  only  the  movie  point 
of  view,  amazing,  but  quite  natural. 

They  make  the  pictures  at  a  place  called 
Hollywood — the  name  may  be  considered  as 
symbolic,  since  there  are  also  activities  else 
where.  Now  Los  Angeles,  which  is  the  best- 
known  suburb  of  Hollywood,  indeed  only  a 
few  miles  away  by  the  trolley,  is  rapidly  be 
coming  one  of  the  largest  cities  in  the  world. 
We  must  of  course  wait  for  the  census  to  be 
sure,  but  it  has  quite  possibly  already  passed  its 

199 


2OO        American   Towns  and  People 

rival,  San  Francisco,  and  it  confidently  pre 
dicts  that  it  will  soon  have  the  most  numerous 
urban  population  west  of  the  Mississippi.  It 
is  not  claimed  that  all  these  people  are  in  the 
movies;  there  must  be  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  unfortunate  creatures  there  who  have  no 
connection  with  them.  But  the  pictures  are, 
for  all  that,  the  one  preeminent  industry  of  the 
great  town ;  they  are  its  obsession,  its  sun  and 
moon. 

In  Los  Angeles  there  are  a  few  cave-dwel 
ling  ladies  (to  borrow  a  Washingtonian 
phrase)  who,  deeply  intrenched  in  West 
Adams  Street,  the  local  Faubourg  St.-Ger- 
main,  still  struggle  to  maintain  the  idea  that 
one  may  be  Angeleno  and  yet  be  scornful,  or 
even  ignorant,  of  the  movie  world.  They  are 
magnificent,  but  they  fight  a  losing  fight. 

They  gain  no  support  from  the  distin 
guished  visitors  from  out  of  town,  who  indeed 
fly  to  the  studios  like  homing  doves.  And  in 
deed  when  real  royalty  arrives,  as  nowadays 
may  happen  in  a  republic,  they  know  quite 
what  it  is  in  California  they  want  to  see. 
Only  recently  several  thousand  amiable  and 
blameless  school-children  waited  in  the  broil 
ing  sun  for  hours,  massed  in  the  form  of  the 
stranger's  national  flag,  while  some  miles  away 
at  the  world's  heart  a  real  king  and  queen  met 
even  more  real  movie  kings  and  queens,  whose 


The  High  Kingdom   of  the  Movies      2OI 

rule  knows  no  boundaries.  Blood  is  indeed 
thicker  than  water. 

Of  course  in  the  social  fight  against  movie 
people  there  are  naturally  dark  and  desperate 
stories  of  dissipation  always  abroad.  If  she 
believed  them,  no  lady,  faubourg  or  otherwise, 
could  fail  to  react  unfavorably.  But  such 
legends  grow  only  too  easily.  We  cannot  be 
quite  sure  that  the  stars  give  parties  so  wild 
that  at  regular  intervals  during  the  long  night 
the  local  police  pass  through  the  rooms  and 
tearfully  plead  with  the  hostess  to  moderate 
the  gayety  of  the  guests — of  course  no  mere 
policeman  would  dare  give  actual  orders  to  a 
really  important  movie  artist.  If  such  parties 
take  place,  those  who  attend  them  may  be 
felicitated  upon  seeing  Babylon  and  Imperial 
Rome  revived.  But  rigid  investigation  dis 
closes  the  fact  that  many  a  Hollywood  social 
evening  consists  merely  in  the  decent  yet  pleas 
urable  experience  of  hearing  some  moving- 
picture  director  tell  the  other  guests  how  great 
he  is.  In  any  case  these  rumors  of  an  ex 
tremely  full  free  life  scarcely  stem  the  tide  of 
stellar  popularity. 

It  is  in  vain  that  gallant  golfers  rule  that  no 
moving-picture  actor  shall  join  their  most  ex 
clusive  club.  The  movie  artists  merely  found 
a  new  club,  and  with  the  loose  change  in  their 
pockets  buy  expensive  land  and  lay  out  a  new 


2O2        American  Towns  and  People 

course.  What  are  trifling  changes  in  the  land 
scape  to  them?  Any  day  they  may  see  the 
tangle  of  a  sub-tropical  garden  modified  by 
the  studio  landscape  specialists  so  that  it  be 
comes  the  rocky  path  in  the  Canadian  North 
west  where  the  hero  and  heroine  first  meet  and 
love. 

It  is  equally  useless  for  proud  and  reaction^ 
ary  owners  of  furnished  houses  to  refuse  to  let 
them  to  lovely  little  blonde  moving-picture 
queens.  All  these  ladies  have  to  do  is  to  tele 
phone  somewhere  and  give  the  order,  and  on 
some  hill  near  by  palaces  rise  in  the  next  week 
or  month  or  so.  Why  should  not  the  builders 
from  the  studio  do  the  job  in  their  off  time? 
What  is  even  an  imperial  villa  to  men  who 
have  perhaps  just  that  afternoon  finished  Cleo 
patra's  boudoir  where  soon  the  lovely  star  will 
entice  the  world?  The  houses  which  owners 
decline  to  rent  to  the  moving-picture  people 
are  pointed  out  to  you  as  among  the  historic 
sights  of  the  region,  but  even  on  the  "Seeing 
Hollywood"  automobiles  they  excite  only  de 
risive  laughter. 

It  is  not  being  worldly-minded  to  say  that 
it  is  absolutely  no  use  trying  to  treat  as  lepers 
those  who  are  rising  upon  an  irresistible  tide 
of  success.  It  is  a  little  as  if  you  stood  upon 
the  bank  of  the  Mississippi  which  was  so  in 
flood  as  to  threaten  to  engulf  your  home  and 


Stimulating  a  vampire  with  strains  from  Strauss. 


The  High  Kingdom  of  the  Movies      203 

snobbishly  said  that  you  did  not  care  to  make 
the  acquaintance  of  a  river  so  common  and 
possibly  so  wayward. 

You  may  possibly,  at  a  Los  Angeles  dinner 
party,  keep  the  conversation  off  the  pictures 
while  the  soup  is  being  served ;  after  that  it  is 
difficult.  As  to  the  people  on  the  street-cars, 
in  the  cafeterias  and  the  hotels,  they  shame 
lessly  adore  the  topic.  They  turn  to  the  movie 
stars  as  sunflowers  to  the  sun.  From  ten  thou 
sand  thousand  altars  incense  burned  to  the 
favorites  streams  toward  the  unstained  Cali 
fornia  blue.  And  the  United  States  postal 
service  might  reasonably  excuse  its  breakdown 
by  making  a  statement  as  to  the  number  of 
letters  received  daily  by  the  adored  ones  from 
every  quarter  of  the  civilized  and  uncivilized 
globe. 

A  good  day  will  bring  by  the  morning  post 
to  a  really  beloved  movie  actress  as  many  as 
eighteen  hundred  and  sixty-seven  letters  from 
unknown  remote  worshipers.  And  there  are 
times  when  the  chief  secretary  for  personal 
letters  and  her  corps  of  undersecretaries  and 
stenographers  faint  beneath  the  burden.  The 
letters  are  infinite  in  variety;  they  range  from 
those  of  simple  admiration  and  gratitude  for 
assuagement  of  soul,  to  the  definite  statement 
that  the  writer  is  leaving  East  Esopus  by  the 
ten-twenty  train  on  Monday  and  would  like  to 


204        American   Towns  and  People 

marry  the  object  of  his  affections  as  soon  as 
possible  after  his  arrival  by  the  Santa  Fe  on 
Saturday.  The  colossal  scale  of  the  movies 
may  be  somewhat  guessed  at  by  the  fact  that 
there  are  always  at  the  Los  Angeles  hotels 
gentlemen  who  have  just  come  to  marry  the 
leading  movie  actresses  or  to  reclaim  the 
lovely  but  evil  vamps. 

Parenthetically,  something  more  should  be 
said  about  these  letters  which  are  read, 
answered,  and  then  turned  over  for  study  and 
tabulation  by  the  business-office  experts,  who 
are,  by  this  time,  more  widely  learned  in  hu 
man  nature  than  the  professors  of  psychology 
in  our  colleges.  The  "appeal"  of  each  star  is 
reduced  to  figures,  and  the  results  guide  the 
future  choice  of  plays  for  the  protagonist  of 
this  correspondence.  Some  odd  things  are 
discovered.  It  is  asserted  that  a  certain 
famous  and  virile  gentleman  is  proved  by  the 
statistics  to  be  loved  chiefly  by  ladies  between 
forty-two  and  fifty,  and  that  consequently  his 
scenarios  must  be  constructed  especially  to  de 
light  this  age  in  the  sex.  Another  is  the  chil 
dren's  darling.  Another  the  ideal  of  "clean- 
cut"  American  youth.  It  is  quite  possible 
that  there  are  figures  available  which  would 
show  what  chiefly  is  the  delight  of  cocaine- 
users  or  of  superannuated  clergymen.  The 
point  is  that  from  the  peaks  of  Hollywood 


The  High  Kingdom  of  the  Movies     205 

fame  one  sees  the  horizon  burst,  and  can  view, 
as  in  an  Einstein  straight  line,  even  the  Antip 
odes.  If  anywhere  here  the  movies  may 
seem  to  be  taken  lightly,  it  is  only  from  in 
competence  to  handle  the  epic  quality  which  it 
is  so  freely  admitted  they  have. 

Never  before,  perhaps,  in  the  world  has  so 
strange  a  social  landscape  existed  as  in  Holly 
wood,  never  a  scene  so  tempting  to  an  am 
bitious  philosopher.  In  a  world  where  the 
study  of  royalty  in  full  bloom  is  becoming  in 
creasingly  difficult,  one  need  not  repine;  the 
picture  people  live  on  an  eminence  and  in  a 
solitude  which  was  unknown  to  royalty  even 
in  its  prime.  Sovereigns  of  the  old  day  had 
power,  but  from  the  modern  point  of  view 
their  publicity  was  not  well  managed.  In 
deed,  publicity  in  any  real  sense  has  never 
existed  until  the  movies  made  their  favorites 
known  to  the  world. 

Imagine  yourself  sojourning  in,  say,  some 
native  village  in  central  New  Guinea,  where 
the  inhabitants  repair  from  their  wattled  or 
otherwise  exotically  constructed  huts  in  the 
scantiest  attire  to  the  local  picture-show;  you 
would  find  that  they  had  not  heard  of  Alex 
ander  the  Great  or  Julius  Caesar;  that  they 
knew  nothing  of  Napoleon,  George  Washing 
ton,  or  Abraham  Lincoln;  that  they  con 
ceivably  were  unaware  of  Kaiser  William,  or 


206        American  Towns  and  People 

even  of  Mr.  Woodrow  Wilson;  but  that  every 
untutored  savage  of  them — man,  woman,  or 
child — knew  the  name  and  the  look  of  the 
well-beloved  comic  of  the  films.  Of  this 
young  gentleman,  for  example,  it  is  now  pos 
sible  to  say  things  that  it  was  never  before  pos 
sible  to  say  of  any  one.  He  is  the  best-known 
person  in  the  whole  world,  and  he  is  better 
known  than  any  one  has  ever  been  in  the 
world's  whole  history. 

Another  great  man  is  said  to  have  a  clause 
in  his  contracts  that  his  salary  shall  be  auto 
matically  raised  so  that  it  shall  always  be 
larger  than  that  of  any  actor  in  the  world! 
Such  thoughts  are  vertiginous! 

Not  only  are  the  movie  artists  the  best 
known;  they  are,  it  would  appear,  the  most 
necessary  people  in  the  world.  The  most 
violent  revolutionist  does  not  conceive  of  any 
rearrangement  of  the  world,  any  dictatorship 
by  the  proletariat,  which  will  not  leave  the 
movie  favorites  on  their  thrones.  If  such  un 
precedented  creatures  present  any  resem 
blance  at  all  to  ordinary  human  beings,  as  in 
deed  they  do,  it  can  only  be  explained  by  the 
natural  and  ineradicable  niceness  of  their  na 
tures. 

You  cannot  prevent  modesty,  like  a  shy 
violet,  from  blossoming  even  under  the  Holly 
wood  hedges.  One  adorable  goddess  cor- 


The  High  Kingdom  of  the  Movies     207 

rected  an  admirer  who  was  asserting  that  she 
was  the  best-known  person  in  the  world. 

"No,"  she  said,  prettily,  "I  don't  think  I'm 
more  than  the  second,  or  even  perhaps  the 
third,  best-known  person  in  the  world." 

True  modesty,  it  must  here  be  passionately 
protested,  has  never  consisted  in  ignoring  all 
the  facts  in  the  case.  Why,  in  the  interests  of 
an  obviously  false  humility,  blink  at  the  truth? 
This  new  royalty  is  indeed  amazingly  demo 
cratic. 

The  court  surrounding  a  movie  king  or 
queen  is  of  course  informal  and  untitled  except 
as  the  masseurs,  the  scenario-writers,  the  pri 
vate  valets,  maids,  and  secretaries,  the  special 
interviewers  for  the  movie  papers,  the  trainers, 
the  Eastern  authors  temporarily  in  captivity, 
the  decorators  of  sets,  the  teachers  of  dancing 
and  rhythmic  movements,  the  professors  of 
swimming  and  diving,  the  masters  of  the  ken 
nels  and  the  royal  stables,  the  architects  in 
ordinary,  the  beauty  and  scalp  specialists,  and 
so  forth  endlessly,  may  be  considered  as  hav 
ing  titles.  In  addition  there  is,  of  course,  the 
cloud  of  unexplained  and  devoted  friends  who 
always  gather  around  a  throne  and  pour  forth 
acquiescence  in  every  gem  of  thought  that  falls 
from  the  royal  lips — "yes-men"  they  are  some 
times  termed  in  the  local  vernacular.  Into 
this  category  also  fall  minor  actors  and  ac- 


208        American   Towns  and  People 

tresses,  and  even  extra  people,  all  of  whom  are 
glad  of  any  chance  to  learn  how  to  behave 
when  they,  too,  shall  in  time  become  royal — 
a  hope  within  the  reach  of  all. 

However  veiled  from  the  general  public's 
eye,  the  life  at  court  of  a  king  is  singularly 
open  to  the  courtiers.  Queens  have,  of  course, 
always  delicately  withdrawn  into  a  certain 
privacy.  But  for  kings  there  is  always  the  ex 
ample  of  Le  Grand  Monarque  with  his  grands 
et  petits  levers  du  roi,  and  Louis  XIV  pub 
licly  putting  on  his  breeches  is  no  more  amaz 
ing  than  one  of  the  athletic  stars,  at  the  close 
of  the  day's  work,  running,  boxing,  jumping, 
and  finally  being  massaged  in  presence  of  the 
full  court  and  to  its  soft,  pleasant,  adulatory 
murmur. 

All  this,  however,  it  must  be  repeated, 
though  not  taking  place  exactly  in  privacy, 
happens  far  from  the  great  beating-hearted 
public.  Of  course  you  could  not  have  lived 
in  Versailles  without  seeing  the  Roi  Solell  oc 
casionally  flash  by  in  his  chariot,  and  in  the 
streets  of  the  movie  cities  you  catch  glimpses 
of  the  great  as  they  break  the  speed  limit  in 
their  high-powered  cars.  Even  so  the  inhabi 
tants  of  California  are  more  blessed  than  those 
of  any  other  region  of  the  world.  Yet  such 
is  the  perversity  of  human  nature  that  a  small 
boy  was  heard  taunting  another  in  the  Holly- 


The  High  Kingdom,  of  the  Movies     209 

wood  streets  with  the  fact  that,  although  he 
might  have  seen  his  favorite  star  often  enough 
in  the  street,  he  had  never  seen  him  on  the 
screen.  Such  incidents  make  you  realize  how 
special  and  curious  is  the  distribution  of  the 
good  things  in  life. 

Of  course  minor  stars  and  the  smaller  fry 
generally  sometimes  seem  so  thick  as  almost 
to  impede  traffic.  There  are  stories,  too, 
which  are  like  those  of  Haroun-al-Raschid  in 
the  romantic  night  of  Bagdad,  or  some  Roman 
empress  bent  upon  imperial  but,  so  far  as  may 
here  be  asserted,  blameless  adventure  in  the 
Los  Angeles  of  that  earlier  day.  The  really 
great,  however,  the  five  or  ten  or  twenty 
wearers  of  the  purple,  do  live  to  some  extent 
behind  a  shimmering  veil  of  mystery.  It  may 
or  may  not  be  in  their  contracts  that  they  shall 
not  dine  at  restaurants  or  repair  thence  to  the 
local  theaters;  at  any  rate,  they  rarely  do. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  they  may  grace  a  first 
showing  of  one  of  their  own  films,  and  the  ar 
rival  and  departure  need  only  the  traditional 
crimson  carpet  to  make  them  perfect.  Ordi 
narily,  however,  movie  stars  see  movies  in  the 
studios  at  private  views,  of  which  one  speaks 
quite  as  if  they  were  repetitions  generates  at 
the  Comedie  Frangaise,  or  in  private  theaters 
at  their  own  palaces  where  a  pleasing  survey 
of  the  work  of  other  artists  may  be  occasion- 


2IO        American   Towns  and  People 

ally  enjoyed,  or  unfavorably  criticized,  if  in 
competent. 

Of  course,  for  most  of  us  lesser  folk  the 
smaller  fry  are  easier  to  observe.  And  the 
sight  is  both  singular  and  agreeable — agree 
able  partly  because  movie-land  is,  above 
everything,  the  land  of  youth,  where  success 
may  come  overwhelmingly  before  you  are 
twenty-one.  (What  terrible  thing  happens  to 
movie  actresses  of  thirty  one  cannot  imagine, 
but  then  few  have  ever  reached  that  extreme 
old  age.)  The  fact  that  the  ideal  movie  ac 
tresses  are  small,  dazzlingly  blond,  and  per 
fectly  formed  (the  type  most  admired,  so  it 
was  alleged,  by  the  Prince  of  Wales),  makes 
them  the  most  delicious  little  creatures  to  see. 
The  young  men  are  gallant  and  handsome, 
and  neither  sex  shows  any  hesitancy  about 
making  dress  fanciful  and  gay.  There  is,  too, 
something  very  piquant  about  actors  and  ac 
tresses  who  go  to  work  like  other  people  in  the 
morning,  though  they  return  quite  unlike  the 
tired  business  man  at  his  hour. 

All  the  things  you  have  read  about  in  the 
newspapers  do  really  happen  in  the  Los 
Angeles  and  Hollywood  hotels.  You  may 
come  home  to  lunch  and  find  that  they  have 
been  shooting  a  picture  in  the  office  and  that 
the  company  in  full  finery  and  paint  are 


The  High  Kingdom  of  the  Movies      211 

lunching  all  around  your  own  table.  There 
may  be,  for  example,  a  bride  in  white  satin 
and  orange  blossoms,  lovely  ladies  in  evening 
dress,  distinguished  old  men — Heaven  only 
knows  what  they  represent — covered  with  for 
eign  orders,  and  once  there  was — oh,  fair  and 
unforgettable  memory! — a  ravishing  small  ac 
tress,  dressed,  for  some  dark  reason,  as  a  jockey 
in  pale  blue,  tight-fitting  doeskin  breeches,  a 
canary-yellow  waistcoat,  and  a  smart  blue 
broadcloth  jacket!  The  contrast  to  the  re 
spectable  families  from  the  Middle  West  who 
occupied  the  other  tables  near  by  was  piquant, 
and  the  experience,  let  us  hope,  for  everybody 
broadening. 

This  may  seem  to  be  taking  the  movies 
lightly,  but  no  one  can  breathe  their  atmos 
phere  long  and  not  be  profoundly  conscious 
that  some  tremendous  force  is  stirring  here. 
It  is  for  our  generation  an  almost  incredible 
experience  to  watch  the  beginnings  and  de 
velopment  of  a  wholly  new  art.  It  is  no  use 
for  gentlemen  with  a  Broadway  past  to  assert, 
with  a  pungent  oath,  that  it  is  not  an  art,  but 
just  the  "show  business."  It  is,  or  is  going  to 
be,  an  art  and  a  great  one,  and  in  Hollywood 
they  realize  the  fact  with  a  kind  of  vague 
terror.  It  is  a  little  as  if  they  had  somehow 
unloosed  a  great  and  beautiful  beast  and  were 


212        American   Towns  and  People 

wondering  whether,  with  their  inexperiences, 
their  ineptitudes,  and  their  vulgarities,  they 
could  long  hold  and  control  him. 

"We  haven't  more  than  scratched  the  sur 
face  yet,"  they  say  in  Hollywood.  It  is  a  cant 
phrase,  and  they  say  it  with  a  light,  cynical  ap 
preciation  of  the  fact  that  it  is  used  too  much. 
But  they  say  it  uneasily,  too,  as  if  some  of 
them,  who  have  not  become  completely  mega 
lomaniac,  wonder  whether,  when  the  moving 
picture  has  come  to  its  full  development,  it 
will  still  be  they  who  ride  the  whirlwind  and 
direct  the  storm. 

The  newness  of  the  movie  in  this  golden 
land  of  California  is  something  fabulous.  It 
is  only  about  five  years  ago  that  the  pioneers, 
lured  by  the  promise  of  eternal  sunshine, 
trekked  across  the  plains  with  their  cameras 
and  a  few  adventurous  actors  who  thought 
there  might  perhaps  be  something  in  the  pic 
tures,  took  barns  and  such  makeshift  quarters 
as  studios  and  began  to  find  out  something 
about  the  movies.  They  are  now  the  old 
aristocratic  movie  families.  Their  ancient 
palaces,  built  long  before  1920,  hang  upon  the 
hills,  and  their  wives  are  dripping  ancestrally 
with  sables  and  pearls. 

Before  the  stories  are  forgotten  some  one 
should  write  the  history  of  this  bonanza 
period.  It  was  like  '49  and  the  rush  for  Cali- 


The  High  Kingdom  of  the  Movies     213 

fornia  gold,  or  like  Virginia  City  when  for 
tunes  in  Nevada  silver-mines  were  made  over 
night.  In  January  a  man  was  driving  a  taxi- 
cab,  in  June  he  was  directing  moving  pictures. 
In  October  actors  from  the  East  were  borrow 
ing  five  dollars  to  pay  for  hall  bedrooms,  in 
the  spring  they  were  insisting  that  their  em 
ployers  give  them  what  are  termed  "open  con 
tracts"  in  which  the  salary  is  delightfully  left 
to  be  filled  in  by  the  actor  himself.  Almost 
without  knowing  it,  the  movie  people  had 
stumbled  upon  unbelievable  deposits  of  the 
precious  metal.  It  seemed  to  be  there  for  any 
one  who  chose  to  pick  it  up.  Salaries  became 
princely.  Actresses  you  had  never  heard  of 
were  guaranteed  twenty  thousand  a  year,  and 
directors  were  counted  failures  if  they  fell  be 
low  a  hundred  thousand.  And  a  frenzy  of 
spending  seized  upon  every  one.  Automo 
biles,  pipe-organs  in  the  house,  horses,  dogs, 
jewels,  swimming-pools,  and  vintage  cham 
pagne!  If  cigars  were  not  lighted  with  hun 
dred-dollar  bills  it  was  only  because  in  the 
days  of  an  earlier  boom  Coal  Oil  Johnny  had 
already  done  it. 

And  the  extravagance  attacked  the  business 
end  of  the  business.  Economy  became  some 
thing  almost  ignoble,  while  wild  spending  was 
thought  to  be  not  only  a  pleasure  and  a  mental 
stimulus  to  all  concerned,  but  a  means  of 


214        American    Towns  and  People 

charming  the  public.  The  press  was  flooded 
with  wild  stories,  and  the  cloudburst  of  gold 
over  Hollywood  was  seen  to  break  into  fine 
glittering  spray  of  a  thousand  lovely  forms. 
It  is  impossible  to  spend  more  money  on  fake 
"antiques"  than  was  spent  in  Hollywood's 
studios,  to  make  uglier  rooms  as  settings  or  to 
admire  them  more.  If  one  ambitious  man 
ager  reproduced  Babylon,  the  next  toyed  with 
Imperial  Rome.  And  if  the  first  hired  a 
thousand  supernumerary  slaves,  his  rival 
bought  at  once  ten  times  that  number.  It  be 
came  the  fashion  to  engage  your  company  at 
full  salary  before  you  had  in  hand  the  scenario 
of  your  play,  and,  even  when  you  commenced 
shooting,  to  pay  salaries  for  long  weeks  to 
some  one  you  needed  only  for  a  brief  scene  at 
the  end.  There  are  now  in  Hollywood  Eng 
lish  actors  who  are,  as  it  were,  permanently 
and  irreparably  dazed  by  such  procedure,  not 
being  able  to  realize  that  it  all  makes  up  the 
kind  of  confused,  turbulent,  passionate  scene 
which  we  in  America  love. 

All  this  is  indeed  but  the  natural  result  of 
a  business  becoming  fabulously  prosperous  be 
fore  any  one  has  had  time  to  learn  how  to  run 
it.  If  the  movies  are  poor  things,  as  they 
sometimes  are,  it  is  because  they  are  made  by 
poor  people,  as  they  sometimes  are.  Why 
not?  There  are  not  enough  good  people  to  go 


The  High  Kingdom  of  the  Movies     21$ 

round.  And  the  incompetent  and  vulgar 
ones,  safely  intrenched,  are  not  especially 
anxious  to  evacuate  in  favor  of  some  one 
better. 

What  has  just  been  set  down  is,  admittedly, 
lese-majeste,  the  only  offense  of  that  kind  uni 
versally  recognized  in  our  country — Heaven 
knows  what  fate  awaits  the  writer  of  such 
words.  Even  under  the  Espionage  Act  you 
may  speak  ill  of  anything  in  America  except 
the  movies — they  are  sacrosanct.  Even  when, 
as  in  this  present  case,  there  is  in  the  criticism 
no  wish  to  exterminate  the  pictures,  only  to 
improve  them. 

And  yet  is  it  not  rather  in  defense  of  them 
that  one  repeats  that  both  pictures  and  picture 
people  are  still  experimental?  Fortunes 
come  and  go.  Reputations  are  made  and  lost 
in  a  day.  The  land  is  noisy  with  the  building 
of  new  movie  theaters;  the  populace,  like 
starved  wolves,  wait  in  lines  that  would  girdle 
the  globe  outside  the  doors.  It  must  be  again 
insisted  that  all  this  is  without  precedent  or 
parallel.  Never  has  any  art  or  alleged  art 
been  so  known,  so  widely  distributed,  so  popu 
lar.  It  is  no  wonder  at  all  that  when  you  are 
close  to  the  movies  you  can  scarcely  see  any 
thing  else  in  the  world.  The  strongest  head 
swims  at  the  possibilities  of  the  future. 
Propaganda,  we  nowadays  believe,  builds  the 


216        American  Towns  and  People 

history  of  nations,  and  no  one  can  yet  guess  to 
what  extent  the  movies,  once  turned  to  this  ser 
vice,  may  mold  the  very  destinies  of  mankind. 
Why  should  the  movie  magnates  stop  at  the 
idea  of  absorbing  the  theater  and  the  queer  old 
spoken  drama?  Why  not  add  the  magazines 
and  the  book  trade,  for  what  indeed  is  written 
literature  but  the  raw  material  of  scenarios? 
Publicity  might  well  demand  the  acquisition 
of  all  newspapers.  And  when  the  mind  and 
the  opinions  of  the  world  are  well  in  hand,  the 
step  to  the  assumption  of  all  the  functions  of 
organized  government  is  not  so  great  as  to  re 
quire  a  particularly  high-vaulting  ambition  to 
achieve  it.  To  those  who  have  not  seriously 
considered  what  moving  pictures  are,  such 
talk  may  seem  wild  and  fantastic.  But  to  a 
movie  magnate  in  Hollywood  it  should  seem 
almost  sweetly  reasonable. 

If  proof  of  this  frame  of  mind  be  needed, 
the  attitude  of  the  magnates  toward  any  cen 
sorship  of  the  pictures  may  be  taken  as  evi 
dence.  There  was  lately  trouble  with  the 
State  of  Pennsylvania,  which  is  considered  in 
the  East  a  rather  powerful  commonwealth. 
But,  from  the  talk  that  went  on  in  Hollywood 
picture  circles  about  its  outrageous  interfer 
ence  with  certain  favorite  films,  you  might 
have  thought  that  Pennsylvania  was  about  to 
be  ignominiously  obliterated  from  the  map, 


The  High  Kingdom  of  the  Movies     217 

and  its  territory,  like  that  of  a  second  Poland, 
partitioned  between  the  surrounding  statea 
which  had  a  more  wholesome  fear  in  their 
hearts  of  meddling  with  the  movies.  Any  one 
who  fears  that  the  pictures  might  be  going 
too  far  in  taking  over  the  complete  charge  of 
the  world  must  remember  that  as  a  nation 
gets  the  kind  of  a  government  it  deserves,  so, 
too,  it  probably  gets  its  due  in  its  kind  of 
movies. 

Since  the  movies  came  there  has  been  more 
"art"  in  the  world  than  ever  before — the  most 
impassioned  detractors  of  the  film  will  at  least 
admit  that  if  the  pictures  have  not  all  the 
merits  of  the  arts,  they  have  at  least  most  of 
their  faults.  There  is,  in  consequence,  more 
of  the  famous  "artistic  temperament"  in  exist 
ence  than  the  world  ever  had  to  cope  with 
before.  And  here,  with  permission,  a  theory 
will  be  propounded,  that  temperament,  which 
may  well  be  considered  in  the  figure  of  a  rag 
ing  lion,  deprived  of  its  natural  excitements 
in  the  immediate  presence  and  applause  of  an 
audience,  is  always  in  Hollywood  hunting  for 
some  other  prey. 

The  whole  question  of  how  acting  is  to  be 
achieved  with  a  cold  and  unresponsive  camera 
taking  the  place  of  an  infatuated  public 
might  possibly  be  here  discussed.  Of  course 
there  is  always  a  certain  public — the  director, 


21 8        American  Towns  and  People 

the  others  of  the  company,  and  the  few  out 
siders  who  by  hook  or  crook  always  manage  to 
be  present — yet  it  is  not  an  adequate  audience. 
And,  besides,  the  conditions  of  picture-making 
necessarily  permit  only  a  small  bit  of  drama 
to  be  done  at  a  time.  That  is  to  say  there  is 
no  long  passionate  flow  of  the  story,  to  warm 
up  temperament  and  sweep  the  artist  emotion 
ally  away.  For  example,  suppose  they  are 
shooting  a  great  moral-uplift  picture  to  be  en 
titled  "The  Senses."  A  beautiful  vampire  is 
ready  in  an  evening  gown  of  purple  chiffon. 
Around  her  middle  is  bound  a  small  tiger- 
skin — to  indicate  that  she  is  not  a  good  woman. 
In  a  minute  she  will  be  asked  to  lead  astray 
a  fattish,  middle-aged  fellow  who  looks  like 
a  prosperous  broker,  but  not  like  a  devastator 
of  female  hearts.  She  has  nothing  to  buoy 
her  up,  to  induce  the  necessary  reprehensible 
emotion,  you  may  suppose.  But  when  the 
camera  man  is  ready  a  small,  rather  dirty 
violinist,  fully  equipped,  steals  stealthily  for 
ward,  and  almost  under  the  lovely  creature's 
nose  draws  forth  from  his  instrument  the  low, 
thrilling  strains  which  immediately  inspire 
her  to  have  her  will  of  her  victim. 

Never  before  have  the  charms  of  music,  to 
thrill  a  savage  breast,  or  to  bring  tears  to  the 
largest,  loveliest,  forget-me-not  blue  eyes,  been 
so  thoroughly  recognized.  The  sister  art  is 


The  reformer  is  an  ever  present  affliction. 


The  High  Kingdom  of  the  Movies      219 

constantly  employed,  sometimes  even  at  the 
cost  of  perfect  harmony,  as  when,  side  by  side 
in  the  studio,  a  bit  of  Beethoven  is  being 
played  by  a  New  England  ex-school-mistress 
on  a  melodeon  to  stimulate  the  actors  in  "Her 
Fatal  Sin"  and  a  jazz  tune  super-jazzed  by  a 
colored  quartet  so  that  the  hero  of  a  comic  may 
with  greater  comicality  fall  into  a  coal-hole. 
It  is  now  even  said  that  one  director  "cutting" 
a  film  feels  that  his  temperament  makes  it  es 
sential  that  he  do  so  to  the  melody  from  a 
string  quartet. 

Has  any  hint  been  given  of  why  the  king 
dom  of  the  movies  is  at  once  so  excited  and 
so  exciting,  why  personal  behavior  is  so  often 
wayward  and  untrammeled,  and  why  Holly 
wood  at  moments  has  all  the  more  agreeable 
characteristics  of  a  mad-house? 

The  assuagement  of  temperament  is  not  al 
ways  accomplished  by  music,  nor,  indeed,  cer 
tain  fond  delusions  of  the  romantic  to  the  con 
trary,  by  vice.  Breaking  contracts  always 
helps,  and  an  occasional  divorce  from  time  to 
time  keeps  one  from  stagnating.  But  there 
are  simpler  ways,  really  more  original.  The 
famous  star  who  leaves  a  standing  order  with 
one  of  his  secretaries  that  at  five  every  after 
noon  all  engagements  for  that  evening  shall 
be,  as  it  were,  automatically  broken,  whether 
he  was  to  figure  in  them  as  host  or  guest,  and 


220        American   Towns  and  People 

something  fresh  and  promising  be  taken  on  at 
six,  is  only  availing  himself  of  his  position  to 
gain  a  sense  of  liberty  and  piquant  novelty  for 
each  night's  pleasure  which  we  should  all  of 
us  like  were  we  as  fortunately  situated. 

Everything  is  grist  that  comes  to  the  mill  of 
temperament,  if  it  is  no  more  than  having  all 
your  meals  up-stairs  on  a  tray  or  wearing 
sables  in  August.  One  does  one's  best,  if  it  is 
only  the  little  actress  who  lets  her  fellow- 
guests  see  that  her  gentlemen  friends  always 
call  her  at  least  fifteen  times  to  the  telephone 
during  dinner  in  the  hotel  dining-room— a 
matter  accomplished  by  arrangement  with  a 
bell-boy  if  anything  goes  wrong.  There  is 
one  great  man  who  would  not  consider  cross 
ing  the  continent  without  his  private  band 
which  plays  after  dinner  in  one  of  his  private 
cars;  he  is  for  the  moment  quenching  the  fire 
within  his  breast.  Chacun  a  son  gout.  An 
other,  a  famous  comedian,  prefers  to  every 
thing  the  liquid  eloquence  of  his  favorite  "yes- 
men"  telling  him  antiphonally  how  great  he'd 
be  in  "Hamlet,"  if  only  the  damn  play  were 
screenable;  and  legend,  so  often  apocryphal, 
even  says  that  an  agreeable  and  accomplished 
monkey  who  inhabits  Hollywood  and  may 
generally  be  seen  whenever  a  scenario  contains 
a  good  simian  part,  is  himself  not  averse  to  the 
pleasures  of  being  interviewed  by  some  hum- 


The  High  Kingdom  of  the  Movies      221 

ble  and  worshiping  writer  for  a  moving-pic 
ture  paper. 

The  need  to  satisfy  temperament  is  not  con 
fined  merely  to  actors  and  actresses.  There 
are  also  to  be  assuaged  the  great  proprietors 
and  the  great  directors  who  now7  rival  the 
prima-donnas  and  the  tenors  of  an  earlier  day. 
Is  there,  we  may  well  ask,  any  good  reason 
why,  when  a  magnate  owner  has  a  big  ex 
hibitor's  contract  to  sign,  involving  millions, 
he  should  not  be  temperamental  over  it?  If 
he  should  motor  by  night  into  the  solitude  of 
the  great  hills,  and  there,  alone  with  Nature, 
comparing  her  grandeur  unfavorably  with  his 
own,  possess  his  soul  and  fix  his  percentages — 
why  not  he  as  well  as  another? 

It  is  partly  by  the  development  of  tempera 
ment  that  directors  have  forged  ahead  so 
amazingly  in  the  movie  world.  When  the 
pictures  started  it  was  known  that  a  certain 
number  of  actors  and  actresses  were  available; 
nothing  was  known  about  directors.  Strate 
gically  they  were  excessively  well  placed,  and 
they  took  excellent  advantage  of  their  position. 

They  have  a  very  amusing  photographic 
trick  in  the  pictures.  They  build,  for  ex 
ample,  a  town,  which  is  to  be  carried  away  by 
a  flood  or  destroyed  by  an  earthquake,  in 
miniature,  with  the  hills  a  few  feet  and  the 
houses  a  few  inches  high.  The  camera  will 


222        American   Towns  and  People 

make  you  believe  it  is  life-size.  A  director, 
directing  such  operations  as  these,  seems  to  be 
seen  in  his  right  stature,  astride  the  world! 

It  has  been  interesting  to  see  how  the 
"featuring"  of  directors  has  kept  pace  and 
almost  outdistanced  that  of  stars.  There  is 
indeed  much  reason  for  this,  and  justice. 
Theirs  is  a  curiously  difficult  and  complicated 
metier,  requiring  tact,  technical  skill,  adminis 
trative  ability,  and  some  touch  of  the  creative 
imagination.  And  yet  it  is  amazing  that  even 
a  director  should  become  so  great  that  the  ad 
vertisements  dare  declare  that  a  picture  of  his 
is 

Greater  than  Words 

Finer   than   Thoughts 

Deeper  than  Life 

even  though  it  be,  as  it  probably  is,  wholly  un 
like  all  three.  Such  phrases  do,  however,  give 
an  idea  of  the  dizzy  heights  to  which  directors 
have  now  climbed.  Here,  at  the  top  of  the 
world,  they  would  do  well  to  consider  not 
merely  their  exalted  position,  but  its  responsi 
bilities.  It  is  true  that  they,  more  than  any 
one  else,  can  make  the  movie  the  fine  and 
beautiful  thing  it  might  become. 

The  director  in  the  flesh — often  a  robustly 
abundant  amount  of  it — is  a  magnificent  sight. 
His  silk  shirt  opens  upon  an  often  fine  throat. 
His  shapely  legs  are  incased  in  shining  Cordo- 


The  High  Kingdom   of  the  Movies      223 

van  leather  gaiters — Heaven  knows  why.  He 
moves  as  a  creature  of  another  race.  If  ex 
clusion  from  the  local  golf  club  has  seared  his 
soul,  outwardly  it  has  only  seemed  to  increase 
his  pride.  Fortunate  are  those,  for  example, 
who  have  seen  him  at  a  shipwreck  scene  where 
he  courageously  orders  scores  of  wretched 
actors  and  actresses  to  risk  exhaustion,  pneu 
monia,  and  death  by  plunging  into  a  boiling 
sea.  Thrice  blessed  those  who  are  invited  for 
great  moments — when  in  the  studio,  for  ex 
ample,  Cleopatra  is  to  entertain  Mark  Antony, 
or  the  Queen  of  Sheba  is  to  visit  Solomon — 
and  are  permitted  to  view  the  glittering  be- 
jeweled  cohorts  marshaled,  and  to  see  scores  of 
women,  each  more  beautiful  than  the  morn, 
tremble  at  their  master's  slightest  word.  At 
such  moments  the  director  is  at  his  best,  a 
beautiful  yet  sinister  Byronic  figure.  Upon 
his  scaffolding  throne  he  sits  like  Xerxes  by 
that  Eastern  sea,  or  perhaps,  with  his  dark, 
passionate  pride,  like  Lucifer  upon  one  of  the 
peaks  of  hell.  He  is  indeed  to-day  the  pro 
tagonist  of  the  movie  drama. 

Of  course  there  are  authors — one  is  always 
in  danger  of  forgetting  them.  They  are  a 
comparatively  unimportant  race,  since  in  the 
movies  even  the  best  paid  of  them  scarcely 
earn  more  than  a  hundred  or  a  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  dollars  a  year.  Scenario-writ- 


224        American  Towns  and  People 

ing  is  in  its  infancy,  and  there  is  no  reason  to' 
suppose  that  in  due  time  the  most  admirable 
scenario-wrights  will  not  be  developed — in 
deed,  they  are  developing  now,  doing  their 
work  direct,  as  it  were,  for  the  screen,  invent 
ing  their  own  stories  and  their  characters  and 
putting  down  their  own  point  of  view  upon 
the  world.  The  best  will  doubtless  be  those 
reared,  as  it  were,  in  the  studios,  to  whom  the 
medium  seems  neither  new  nor  strange. 
These  young  people  will  probably  do  better 
things  than  either  superannuated  hacks  from 
that  queer  old  speaking  stage,  or  indeed  more 
robust  young  Broadway  playwrights,  who  are 
merely  lusting  for  the  profits  of  the  films. 
All  are  in  danger  of  discouragement;  they 
have  moments  when  the  whole  business  of 
providing  material  for  the  pictures  is  con 
temptuously  spoken  of  as  the  "canning-fac 
tory."  And  indeed  there  are  moments  when 
ineptitude,  banality,  and  vulgarity  seem  to  be 
becoming  standardized.  But  the  uneasy  sense 
which  pervades  Hollywood  that  the  public  is 
constantly  demanding  not  only  more  but  better 
pictures,  should  be  proof  that  there  is  sure  to 
be  a  field  some  day  soon  for  every  one's  best 
and  brightest  creations. 

The  term  authors  is  sometimes  used  to  de 
scribe  those  who,  instead  of  writing  scenarios, 
turn  out  magazine  stories,  books,  or  plays  for 


The  High  Kingdom  of  the  Movies      22$ 

the  speaking  stage.  And  until  very  recently 
the  chief  object  of  movie  activities  was  to  pre 
vent  the  interference  of  these  "nuts"  in  the 
Hollywood  change  of  their  work  into  some 
thing  rich  and  strange  for  the  pictures.  It 
may  be  suspected  that  the  old  guard  of  the 
film  world  will  fight  hard  before  it  will  ad 
mit  these  barbarians,  who  know  nothing  of 
"continuity"  and  such  mysteries,  into  the  rich 
inclosure  to  loot  and  pillage.  Yet  it  is  a  symp 
tom  of  the  uneasiness  of  these  veterans  of  three 
or  four  years'  service  that  you  begin  to  hear 
talk  even  among  them  about  getting  the  author 
more  "into  the  business." 

A  slight  beginning  has  of  course  been  made. 
Authors  have  been  brought  in,  confined  at  the 
studios  in  pleasant,  sunlit  cells,  with  chintz- 
covered  chairs,  and  pet  canary-birds  or  gold 
fish,  as  best  pleased  them,  and  there  expected 
to  work.  It  is  not  quite  certain  how  much 
they  have  worked — there  were  also  chintz- 
covered  sofas.  At  any  rate,  there  is  no  real 
proof  that  they  were  actually  taken  behind  the 
veil  and  permitted  to  know  the  mysteries. 
But  something  is  stirring  in  the  deep  bosom  of 
our  greatest  art;  somewhere  in  that  dim  future 
one  sees  that  our  greatest  authors  may  be  those 
who  have  rid  themselves  of  both  the  spoken 
and  written  word. 

Who,  however,  cares  for  theories  who  has 


226        American  Towns  and  People 

journeyed  to  the  high  kingdom  of  the  movies 
and  seen  that  gay,  rich,  wild,  struggling,  and 
striving  world?  It  is  a  privilege  to  have  seen 
the  human  side  of  royalty;  to  have  learned  that 
they,  though  triumphant,  still  dream  of 
higher  efforts,  better  pictures.  And,  though 
both  cats  and  authors  may  look  at  queens  and 
kings  and  afterward  talk  a  little  banteringly 
about  it  all,  both  must  be  deeply  sensible  that 
to  have  been  received  at  court  is  at  once  a 
pleasure  and  an  honor.  Good  luck  to  Holly 
wood.  It  is  indeed  the  capital  of  the  world. 


The  American  Child 

IN  a  recent  ingenious  and  original  volume 
on  some  eminent  figures  of  the  Victorian 
period  the  author  at  the  very  outset  says  that 
the  difficulty  in  writing  the  history  of  that  time 
is  that  we  know  too  much  about  it. 

"Ignorance,"  he  goes  on  gravely  to  assure 
us,  "is  the  first  requisite  of  the  historian — 
ignorance  which  simplifies  and  clarifies, 
which  selects  and  omits  with  a  placid  perfec 
tion  unattainable  by  the  highest  art." 

These  phrases  are  hastily  borrowed  to  set 
at  the  head  of  this  article,  not  so  much  because 
they  shine  more  brightly  than  other  epigrams 
with  which  the  modern  literary  firmament  is 
studded  as  because  they  seem  to  give  courage 
to  a  celibate  author  about  to  put  a  rash  pen 
to  paper  for  a  description  of  the  American 
child. 

The  bachelor,  unless  employed  in  a  medical 
capacity,  knows  almost  nothing  of  the  birth  or 
extreme  infancy  of  the  personage  in  question. 
And  even  of  that  time  when  the  child  begins 
to  prattle,  and  wit  and  wisdom  cascade  from 
its  lips  like  pearls,  the  non-father  is  only  an 

227 


228        American  Towns  and  People 

ill-accredited  historian,  unless,  as  Mr.  Lytton 
Strachey  says,  ignorance  be  an  equipment.  It 
is  singular  how  easy  it  is  to  forget  stories  about 
other  people's  children.  In  these  pages  can 
be  promised  none  of  those  anecdotes  of  little 
Herbert  or  Eva  which  enrapture  the  parent 
and  indeed  lead  him  into  an  emotional  morass 
from  which  he  can  never  clearly  see  the  whole 
race  of  children,  the  majority  of  which  are  in 
evitably  not  his  own. 

Here  indeed  has  been  made,  almost  before 
it  was  intended,  the  plea  of  the  writer's  com 
petence.  Child-study — a  majestic  term — is 
nowadays  a  leading,  perhaps  the  leading 
branch  of  American  learning,  and  in  investi 
gating  a  great  subject  many  workers  are  desir 
able.  Close  observation,  such  as  a  parent  can 
give,  of  the  individual  specimen  is  indispens 
able.  But  a  more  disengaged  eye  will  per 
haps  better  trace,  through  the  nation's  history, 
the  rise  of  children  to  their  present  eminent 
position,  and  judge  the  processes  by  which 
they  grasped  power.  The  disinterested  celi 
bate  may  also  possibly  best  judge  the  tend 
encies  in  the  opposite  direction,  toward  the 
resubjugation  of  the  race  of  children,  the  ways 
in  which  they  themselves  are  made  victims 
of  this  new  wide-spread  science  of  child-cul 
ture.  The  American  child  is  not  merely  a 
small  individual,  straight  or  curly  haired,  and 


The  American  Child  229 

agreeable  or  disagreeable  as  the  case  may  be. 
He  is  a  great  and  epic  figure.  On  his  small, 
unconscious  shoulders  he  bears  the  nation's 
future;  and  as  a  cat  may  look  at  a  queen  so 
long  as  those  anomalous  figures  decorate  the 
world,  so  may  a  man  who  presumably  knows 
little  enough  about  children  still  observe  them, 
discreetly  and  from  a  respectful  distance,  and 
believe  that  his  contribution  to  the  knowledge 
of  them  has  its  small  value. 

It  might,  too,  be  urged  that  a  bachelor,  even 
in  the  forties,  may  conceivably  like  children. 
But  doting  parents  find  it  so  difficult  to  believe 
in  even  this  restrained  and  temperate  affection 
that  the  point  will  not  be  unduly  pressed. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  Republic  the  child, 
though  produced  freely,  had  no  great  vogue, 
if  one  may  put  it  that  way.  Children  were 
an  almost  invariable  accompaniment  of  mar 
riage,  and  that  they  were  generally  liked  there 
can  be  no  reasonable  doubt.  But  no  one  made 
any  great  fuss  about  them.  They  were  some 
times,  to  quote  the  language  of  the  period, 
limbs  of  Satan,  and  this,  though  it  distressed, 
puzzled  no  one.  The  doctrine  of  original  sin 
still  prevailed,  and  affectionate  parents  re 
signed  themselves  to  beating  the  Evil  One  out 
of  their  offspring.  "Spare  the  rod  and  spoil 
the  child"  was  a  maxim  on  the  tenderest  pa 
rental  lips.  Religion  held  out  some  hope  of 


230        American   Towns  and  People 

retrieving  these  poor,  small  lost  ones.  The 
early  volumes  of  the  admirable  Poolers  Index 
to  Periodical  Literature  had  an  astonishing 
number  of  entries  under  the  title  "Conversion 
of  Children."  There  were,  of  course,  the  in 
credible  Sunday-school  stories  with  painful 
heroes  and  heroines,  convinced  at  a  tender  age 
of  sin,  but,  on  the  whole,  children  appeared 
very  little  in  literature.  Not  much  was  writ 
ten  for  them  and  comparatively  little  about 
them.  In  their  social  aspect  they  were,  by  the 
grace  of  God  and  the  discipline  of  their  elders, 
seen  but  not  heard.  A  grim  picture,  every 
one  must  admit.  And,  though  under  this 
regime  many  an  unpromising  child  turned 
into  an  admirable  grown-up — yet  as  certainly 
many  a  little  one  of  rare  gifts  and  promise  was 
crushed  into  hopelessness  by  its  harshness. 

The  pendulum  has  swung  as  far  the  other 
way  now.  There  was,  of  course,  an  inter 
mediate  period.  Little  Eva  in  Mrs.  Stowe's 
pages  is  of  course  a  Sunday-school  survival, 
but  she  was  followed  by  Peck's  Bad  Boy  and 
then  those  immortals,  Tom  Sawyer  and  Huck 
Finn.  Even  Henry  James,  who  at  first  blush 
seems  out  of  place  in  this  galere,  made  Daisy 
Miller's  naughty  little  brother  famous.  And 
a  tale  called  Helen's  Babies  was,  as  late  as  the 
early  'seventies  of  the  last  century,  one  of  the 
first  phenomenal  best-selling  successes.  It 


The  American  Child  231 

was  the  bad  child's  moment,  the  era  of  the 
enfant  terrible.  Scenting  no  danger  and 
pleased  with  its  new  spirit  of  tolerance  and 
humanity,  the  American  public  warmed  this 
monster  in  its  bosom.  The  child,  which  had 
been  an  inferior,  almost  inhuman  creature, 
was  now  welcomed  as  an  equal  and  a  brother. 
No  one  saw  in  how  few  years  it  might  become! 
a  superior  and  a  master. 

Henry  James,  always  oversensitized  as  to 
the  American  child,  felt  early  something  omi 
nous  about  it.  In  some  story  of  a  European- 
ized  American  returning  home  the  hero  hears 
in  a  hotel,  and  notes  with  fear,  "the  high,  firm 
note  of  a  child.''  And  there  is  another  hotel 
passage  of  equal  significance  which  is  worth 
transcribing: 

Then  there  are  long  corridors  defended  by 
gusts  of  hot  air.  Down  the  middle  swoops  a 
pale  little  girl  on  roller-skates.  "Get  out  of 
my  way!"  she  shrieks  as  she  passes.  She  has 
ribbons  on  her  hair  and  frills  on  her  dress. 
She  makes  the  tour  of  the  vast  hotel. 

Is  one  mistaken  in  detecting  here  the  crea 
tion  of  a  Frankenstein? 

There  are  many  possible  reasons  for  the  rise 
in  the  value  of  children.  It  is  always  con 
ceivable  that  it  may  be  explained  on  purely 


232        American   Towns  and  People 

economic  grounds.  As  families  grow  smaller, 
children,  now  more  rarely  produced,  come  to 
have  a  scarcity  price  put  on  them  in  the  mar 
ketplace  of  sentiment.  We  now  vie  with  one 
another  in  finding  expression  for  their  worth. 
A  poet  and  essayist  who  is  even  more  widely 
read  here  than  in  her  native  England  drove 
the  point  home  when  she  asserted  that,  rather 
than  that  one  child  should  ever  die  of  hydro 
phobia,  she  would  exterminate  all  the  millions 
of  dogs,  pet  anvd  otherwise,  of  the  world!  Is 
it  to  be  wondered  that  it  became  increasingly 
difficult  to  discipline  a  race  so  well  thought 
of? 

An  English  visitor  in  the  middle  'eighties 
notes  with  grave  consternation  the  difficulty 
American  parents  have  in  keeping  children 
from  swearing  and  from  calling  their  parents 
by  their  given  names.  It  would  be  hard  to 
say  to-day  just  how  general  swearing  has  be 
come  among  our  best  children,  but  in  any  case 
we  may  be  sure  that  if  they  swear  it  is  con 
sidered  part  of  their  charm  as  it  is  of  parrots. 
As  for  calling  father  "Arthur"  or  "Woopsy," 
that  goes  without  saying.  And  old  gentlemen 
who  in  the  early  nineteenth  century  would 
have  belched  fire  had  they  been  addressed  as 
anything  but  "Sir"  will  now  fawn  upon  chil 
dren,  pleading  with  them  to  be  called 
"Cousin  Howard"  or  "Scootums."  Anything 


The  American   Child  233 

as  formal  as  the  old  modes  of  address  seems 
rigid  and  chilling,  and  likely  to  lose  to  their 
elders  that  approbation  by  children  which  is 
now  so  essential  to  any  self-respect. 

The  advance  of  the  child  was  gradual  and 
insidious.  As  no  one  realized  the  momentous 
nature  of  the  change,  no  one  noted  it.  Of 
course  there  were  outward  signs  which  should 
have  warned.  Children's  dress,  for  example, 
which  had  been  extremely  ugly,  became  pretty 
and  picturesque.  The  Kate  Greenaway  books 
which  came  with  the  "art  revival"  of  the 
'eighties,  made  children's  clothes  delightful 
and  children  themselves  adorable.  The  effete 
continent  of  Europe  began  to  send  its  styles. 
Small  dashing  sailors  began  to  appear,  and 
ravishing  little  girls  with  short  socks  and  bare 
knees.  It  was  the  beginning  of  the  end. 

Books  about  children  for  children,  and, 
more  dangerous,  about  children  for  grown 
ups,  began  to  appear.  Perhaps  it  was  Little 
Lord  Fauntleroy  who  started  it.  But  there 
was,  too,  that  enchanting  volume,  The  Golden 
Age.  The  stage  played  its  part,  too.  Child 
actresses  and  actors  became  an  important 
feature  of  theatrical  life;  their  bleating  voices 
may  still  occasionally  be  detected,  though  they 
have  grown  and  now  assume  maturer  roles. 
Societies  for  the  protection  of  children  inter 
vened.  But  the  public  would  not  be  balked. 


234        American   Towns  and  People 

Dwarfs  were  discovered  who  assumed  infan 
tile  roles;  closely  shaven  (twice  on  matinee 
days)  they  even  assumed  the  parts  of  the  un 
born  children  in  The  Blue  Bird.  Once  you 
begin  to  see  that  a  little  child  may  lead  you, 
you  are  its  hopeless  and  infatuated  slave. 
You  are,  as  to  the  young  of  the  race,  on  the 
way  to  being  a  confirmed  Barrieite  or  a 
Maeterlinckian. 

Barrie  has  made  us  see  childhood  anew. 
In  the  country  where  his  children  play  the 
same  dew  sparkles  that  lay  like  diamonds  on 
the  grass  at  the  world's  dawn.  There  is  no 
witchery  like  his,  no  such  tenderness,  no  such 
foolish,  lovely  jokes.  We  break  our  hearts 
for  some  lost,  half-forgotten  Arcadia.  We 
hear  the  bells  that  ring  in  some  happy  city 
where  all  saints  and  angels  and  little  children 
that  have  died  now  are.  And  this  poor  world, 
as  we  listen  to  him,  would  be,  so  it  seems,  like 
Paradise  itself,  half  laughter  and  half  tears, 
if  we  could  only  rightly  value  its  youngest  and 
fairest  inhabitants. 

Maeterlinck,  speaking  another  language  for 
another  civilization,  does  not,  perhaps,  ever 
come  so  intimately  near  to  us.  But  he  would 
lead  us  even  closer  to  the  mysteries.  In  his 
dim  regions,  lit  by  lovely  unearthly  lights, 
little  children,  all  blond  and  shimmering,  wait 
to  be  born.  And  he  would  have  us  vaguely 


The  American  Child  235 

apprehend  the  process  by  which  each  small 
wandering  soul  seeks  out  the  mother  who  shall 
in  divine  tenderness  love  it. 

If  these  two  writers  only  are  mentioned  of  a 
whole  school,  it  is  because  they  are  the  high 
priests.  There  is  indeed  something  of  the 
quality  of  a  new  religion  in  the  modern  exalta 
tion  of  the  child.  Once,  when  men  felt  the 
need  of  something  gentler  and  more  merciful, 
there  grew  up  in  the  Church  the  cult  of  the 
Mother  of  God.  To-day,  does  not  the  child, 
sitting  on  his  mother's  knee,  smile  more  en 
gagingly,  and  seem  to  hint  persuasively  that  in 
his  innocence  is  the  salvation  of  the  world? 

Sympathy  and  liking  are  duly  and  sincerely 
recorded  here  for  anything  that  can  make  the 
world  more  sensible  of  the  fragile,  evanescent 
beauty  of  childhood.  Yet  we  have  a  right  to 
examine  even  new  religions  and  see  how  their 
tenets  are  to  affect  our  daily  lives.  If  chil 
dren  are  human  at  all  it  may  be  dangerous  to 
burn  so  much  incense  before  them,  dangerous 
alike  to  them  and  to  those  who  swing  the 
censers. 

Children  were  once  thought  well  of  chiefly 
because  they  would  grow  up  to  be  men  and 
women ;  nowadays  men  and  women  are  valued 
mostly  because  they  were  once  children. 
Growing  up  is  only  falling  from  a  once  proud 
estate.  Children  come  to  us  trailing  clouds 


236        American   Towns  and  People 

of  glory,  and  gifted,  too — this  is  the  curious 
point — with  some  antique  instinctive  wisdom 
more  cosmic  than  ours,  more  directly  drawn 
from  the  hidden  divine  fountains  of  the  uni 
verse.  To  adepts  of  the  new  cult  a  child  at 
the  breakfast-table  consuming  its  cereal  nour 
ishment  sits  oracularly  like  the  Delphic 
priestess.  A  gentleman  prominent  in  national 
affairs  took  this  view  of  his  blameless  little 
yellow-haired  daughter  and  gravely  put  to  her 
the  problems  which  were  distracting  the 
world. 

"I  believe  so  and  so,''  he  would  sometimes 
say,  "but  Gracie  and  the  chief  justice  of  the 
Supreme  Court  think  I'm  wron£." 

That  he  often  was  wrong  does  not,  some 
how,  to  one  heretical  as  to  childhood's  su 
preme  wisdom,  prove  that  Gracie  was  as  often 
right.  Of  course  the  father's  moderation  in 
allowing  Grade's  inspired  words  to  prove  the 
chief  justice  rather  than  himself  right  must  be 
praised;  it  is  more  often  the  other  way  round. 
A  street  preacher  on  a  soap-box  once  shouted: 

"I  say,  and  God  agrees  with  me — " 

Some  of  the  more  rapturous  child-wor 
shipers  seem  a  little  like  this.  They  say,  and 
children  agree  with  them;  the  coincidence  be 
ing  as  sure  proof  of  children's  wisdom  as  to 
the  soap-box  exhorter  it  was  of  God's. 

Under  the  influence  of  such  sentiments  edu- 


The  American  Child  237 

cation  has  of  course  been  transformed.  No 
one  can  doubt  the  harshness  and  too  often  the 
stupidity  of  the  old  school  system,  and  no  one 
can  help  wishing  that  the  acquisition  of 
knowledge  might  be  a  pleasure  rather  than  a 
torment.  And  yet  the  object  of  education  is 
presumably  still  to  educate,  its  power  to  amuse 
being  supplementary  wholly,  and  we  must 
deal  with  the  fact  that  children  in  our  schools 
do  not  nowadays  much  care  to  work.  If 
things  do  not  suit  them,  they  strike — even  New 
York  has  already  seen  this.  From  Bolshevik 
Russia  comes  almost  ideal  news  to  children. 
The  scholars  there  establish  the  curriculum 
and  dismiss  at  their  pleasure  unpopular 
teachers!  They  see  to  their  own  comfort,  too, 
not  only  by  lengthening  the  recess-time,  but  by 
establishing  well-equipped  smoking-rooms  for 
the  upper  classes!  Of  course  this  last  pro 
vision  may  not  seem  much  to  the  children  of 
New  York  and  New  Jersey,  who,  according  to 
recent  astonishing  revelations,  are  accustomed 
to  securing  their  supply  of  cocaine  fresh  each 
day  from  enterprising  merchants  who  are  at 
hand  just  outside  the  school  gates  at  the  clos 
ing-hour.  But  this  is  only  a  measure  of  what 
improvements  we  may  expect  when  American 
children  take  the  schools  in  hand. 

Even  teachers  sometimes,  in  moments  of  dis 
couragement,  admit  that  children  don't  work 


238        American   Towns  and  People 

as  hard  as  they  used  to  and  don't  learn  as 
much.  Is  it, possible  to  trace  a  connection  be 
tween  these  two  facts?  Is  work  really  neces 
sary?  Will  children,  even  under  the  most 
modern  system,  ever  learn  the  multiplication 
table  in  sheer  ecstasy  of  joy?  Foreign  chil 
dren  seem  to  know  more  than  their  American 
confreres;  just  as  grown-up  foreigners  so 
often  seem  better  educated  than  we  ourselves 
are.  Is  the  difficulty  that  we  still  make 
lessons  a  little  irksome,  and  do  not  trust 
enough  to  that  innate  excellence  of  the  child, 
which  would  doubtless,  when  the  time  came, 
give  him  knowledge  as  if  by  miracle? 

There  is  a  singularly  pleasant  legend 
(which  should  be  a  great  favorite  with  child- 
worshipers)  concerning  the  offspring  of  a  dis 
tinguished  American  authority  on  painting. 
These  children,  so  it  is  alleged,  passed  their 
early  years  wholly  art-free,  unmolested  by  any 
knowledge  of  paintings  and  their  value. 
Their  ignorance  was  abysmal,  considering 
whose  children  they  were.  Yet  their  bodies 
were  healthy  and  their  minds  virgin  soil,  and 
their  parents  confident  that  when  the  time 
came — 

The  time  at  last  did  come.  When  they 
were  fourteen  and  twelve,  respectively,  the 
little  boy  and  girl  were,  in  accordance  with 
their  parents'  theories,  solemnly  taken  to  the 


The  American   Child  239 

Uffizi  Gallery  in  Florence.  There  they  were 
placed  successively  in  front  of  the  master 
pieces  of  the  painter's  art  while  gently  and 
lucidly,  in  simple  words,  it  was  explained  to 
them  why  these  were  great  and  noble  pictures. 
Their  little  minds,  unsullied  by  art-knowl 
edge,  free  from  the  squint  which  the  sight  of 
bad  painting  gives,  were  able  to  understand 
at  once,  to  swallow  art  at  a  gulp.  They  re 
turned  home,  where  a  hot  bath,  a  wholesome 
supper,  and  a  night's  sound  rest  invigorated 
them  and  prepared  them  for  the  morrow's  test. 

At  about  eleven  in  the  morning  they  were 
taken  to  the  Pitti  Gallery  and,  as  it  were, 
loosed.  And  then — oh,  lovely  miracle! — like 
homing  doves  they  flew  unerringly  to  the 
masterpieces  there  housed,  and  proclaimed 
their  merit  in  choice  English  such  as  their  own 
father  might  have  used!  This  is  the  kind  of 
a  story  every  one  would  like  to  believe.  It 
seems  to  take  some  practical  advantage  of  the 
child's  intrinsic  superiority  to  the  man,  and  to 
dispense  with  all  annoying  and  expensive 
study. 

Unfortunately  for  the  comfort  of  children, 
few  parents  have  the  perfect  faith  of  these  just 
noted.  The  education  of  children,  though 
transformed,  still  goes  on  at  terrific  tension. 
But  the  work  now  seems  to  be  piled  on  the 
mothers  rather  than  on  the  children.  The 


240        American   Towns  and  People 

most  feeble-minded  mother  who  is  capable  of 
bearing  a  child  must  now  be  thoroughly 
familiar  with  all  its  reflexes,  complexes,  and 
inhibitions.  While  she  is  washing  the  dishes 
she  must  prop  up  the  latest  volume  on  pre 
natal  influences  against  the  pan.  She  must 
swim  out  upon  a  vasty  ocean  of  science  and 
theory.  She  must  search  her  soul  to  know 
whether  breakfast  contained  a  safe  blending  of 
proteins  and  vitamines,  and  she  must  be  sure 
that  the  union  suit  of  underwear  she  has 
chosen  for  her  darling  puts  no  strain  upon  the 
dorsal  muscles.  With  Freud  in  hand  she  must 
read  her  child's  dreams  as  did  priests  of  old 
the  entrails  of  the  sacrifices,  trying  to  discover 
whether  the  pain  in  the  little  one's  heel  is  there 
because  his  great-grandmother,  in  girlhood, 
dreamed  of  Achilles. 

Such  labors  and  such  devotion  immediately 
suggest  that  motherhood  has  now  perhaps  be 
come  a  greater  thing  than  childhood.  May  it 
be,  after  all,  that  the  child's  chief  value  in  our 
American  life  is  that  it  brings  into  being  the 
American  mother?  When  you  see  in  Wash 
ington  the  fine  building  which  serves  as  Head 
quarters  of  the  National  Congress  of  Mothers, 
you  realize  how  serious  a  matter  it  is  to  go  into 
the  profession  of  child-bearing. 

There  is  perhaps  a  good  deal  of  mock 
heroics  in  all  this  talk  of  the  mother  sacro- 


The  American  Child  241 

sanct — peasant  women  accustomed  to  plow  a 
field  the  day  after  a  child  is  born  might  well 
think  it  a  confession  of  the  frailness  and 
cowardice  of  the  modern  city-dwelling  fe 
male.  Yet  it  is  well  to  read  over  occasionally 
the  pages  in  which  Theodore  Roosevelt,  never 
a  puling  sentimentalist,  ennobles  and  dignifies 
motherhood.  And  no  one  can  seriously 
quarrel  with  any  Better  Babies  campaign. 
(The  law  and  practice  as  to  child  labor  in 
some  parts  of  the  country  are  crying  for  the 
attention  of  the  merciful  mothers  of  Amer 
ica.)  Even  Malthus,  a  much-maligned  phi 
losopher,  did  not  preach  race  suicide — only 
fewer,  and  so  better,  children.  Indeed,  to 
hand  a  better  world  on  to  a  better  generation 
is  succinctly  the  great  and  holy  duty  of  man 
kind,  and  the  most  bemuddled  mother  over 
her  scientific  volumes,  however  comic  she  may 
be,  is  never  quite  a  figure  of  fun. 

Nevertheless,  it  may  be  permissible  to  sound 
a  warning.  Scientific  knowledge  on  the 
mother's  part  must  not  be  allowed  to  rub  the 
remaining  bloom  from  childhood.  The  cab 
bage,  even  when  it  begins  its  career  under  a 
bell  glass,  and  has  its  roots  warmed  with  hot- 
water  pipes  within  the  soil,  probably  does  not 
much  mind  being  kept  from  sounding  its 
native  field-note  wild.  The  incubator  babies, 
too,  at  Coney  Island  or  the  county  fair,  do  not 


242        American  Towns  and  People 

concern  themselves  as  yet  with  the  romance 
and  poetry  of  their  rearing.  (What  a  char 
acter  the  incubator  baby,  free  from  all  senti 
mental  memories  of  parents,  makes  for  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw!)  But  most  other  modern 
children,  though  they  be  potentates,  find  life 
by  no  means  all  near-beer  and  skittles.  They 
are  pestered  at  every  step  by  new  theories 
learned  in  the  child-study  course  for  mothers. 
Once  upon  a  time  there  was  a  very  beautiful 
little  girl  with  golden  locks  who  lived  like  a 
princess  with  her  very  modern  and  scientific 
father  and  mother  in  a  large  house  upon  a 
little  hill  where  many  wild  strawberries  grew. 
A  well-meaning  but  unscientific  grown-up 
guest  (a  wretched  bachelor,  of  course)  sug 
gested  one  day,  when  he  happened  to  be  break 
fasting  alone  with  the  little  girl,  whom  he 
very  much  liked,  that  she  and  he  should  spend 
the  morning  blissfully  gathering  the  sweet- 
perfumed  little  berries  which  they  would  eat 
at  lunch  with  the  thick  cream  which  came 
from  the  nice  cow  in  the  barn.  The  lovely 
little  girl  said,  "No,  thank  you,"  but  her  lip 
trembled.  Then  the  foolish  old  bachelor 
again  explained  and  urged  his  delightful  plan, 
upon  which  the  lovely  little  girl  burst  into 
tears  and  rushed  from  the  table.  The  scien 
tific  mother  a  little  later  explained  that  by  the 
doctor's  orders  the  lovely  little  girl  had  never 


The  American   Child  243 

in  all  her  life  been  allowed  to  eat  any  un 
cooked  fruit! 

Now  the  doctor  may  have  been  right;  in 
deed,  an  amendment  to  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  prohibiting  the  eating  of  raw 
fruit  by  minors  may  be  urgently  necessary. 
But  we  must  learn  somehow  legitimately  to  in 
clude  picking  wild  berries  in  the  activities  of 
childhood.  It  is  humbly  suggested  that  per 
haps  if  the  stewing  of  the  fruit  might  have 
occurred  on  a  brick  stove  which  the  child  had 
helped  build,  over  leaves  and  twigs  she  her 
self  had  gathered,  something  of  the  old 
glamour  of  wild-strawberry  adventure  might 
have  clung  to  it  still,  as  the  grown-up  had  re 
membered  it  from  his  own  boyhood. 

Especially  in  reference  to  rural  pleasures  it 
is  to  be  hoped  that  the  children  of  to-day  may, 
when  they  are  older,  have  some  of  the  ro 
mantic  memories  that  their  elders  now  have. 
Perhaps  it  is  only  a  trick  of  advancing  age, 
but  the  swimming-hole  in  the  brook  seems  to 
have  a  quality  which  no  bathing  establishment 
with  a  pool  and  pergola  and  hot  and  cold 
showers  can  ever  have.  During  last  autumn's 
war  thrills  one  of  the  great  metropolitan  news 
papers  for  days  filled  columns  with  letters 
from  elderly  contributors  who  debated  about 
the  corn-silk  cigarettes  of  their  youth,  or  those 
they  made  of  the  dried  leaves  of  the  wild 


244        American   Towns  and  People 

grape.  It  seems  somehow  as  if  the  modern 
child's  country  were  too  well  equipped. 

Of  course  in  the  country  nature  study  pur 
sues  the  child.  A  parent  or  other  instructor 
at  his  elbow  forces  him  to  learn  how  to  tell 
the  wild-flower  from  the  birds — the  phrase  is 
by  now  traditional.  And  one  suspects  that,  al 
though  they  provide  delightful  Indian  and 
cowboy  suits,  they  even  want  him  to  learn 
from  some  handbook  how  to  play  the  Sioux 
brave  and  from  some  recommended  diagrams 
how  to  build  a  robber's  cave.  But  childhood 
and  the  country  are  an  almost  invincible  com 
bination;  it  would  be  hard  to  ruin  them. 

It  is  very  pleasant  to  think  of  all  the  summer 
camps  throughout  the  land  where  boys,  and 
girls,  too,  both  rich  and  poor,  may  learn  some 
thing  of  woodcraft  and  simple  living  and 
open-air  sleeping.  Nothing  can  be  more 
agreeable  than  to  see  a  company  of  Boy  Scouts 
starting  off  for  a  week-end  hike  to  the  country, 
where  they  will  camp,  and  catch  and  fry  their 
own  fish,  and  perhaps  lie  on  beds  of  pine 
needles.  On  the  whole,  perhaps  the  modern 
way  is  just  as  good.  And  many  parts  of  the 
country  have  a  moving-picture  theater  fairly 
accessible  and  a  soda-water  fountain  at  hand, 
so  that  the  most  exacting  child  who  is  not  con 
tent  with  the  simple  pleasures  of  field  and 
stream  may  not  lack  its  evening  amusement. 


The  American   Child  245 

There  is,  however,  quite  seriously,  the 
definite  danger  that  all  this  psychic  mode  of 
educating  may  kill  every  little  eccentricity, 
every  little  imaginative  quality  in  a  child 
which  may  be  different  from  the  standardized 
imagination  for  children  as  found  in  Barrie 
and  Maeterlinck  and  recommended  in  the 
mothers'  handbooks,  and  so  in  the  end  produce 
a  monotony  of  personalities.  It  cannot  be  too 
pleasant  for  a  child  to  be  too  closely  studied, 
especially  when  it  comes  into  the  odd,  de 
licious,  happy,  sad  days  of  adolescence — it  is 
not  pleasant,  when  a  fellow  is  embarked  upon 
his  first  love-affair,  to  find  mother  at  hand 
with  Chapter  XIII  of  her  favorite  volume  on 
child-psychology,  demanding  the  most  awk 
ward  and  embarrassing  confidences,  and  study 
ing  her  son  as  Fabre  might  an  amorous  insect 
under  the  microscope.  In  the  old  days  chil 
dren  were  sometimes  very  unhappy  because  no 
one  was  trying  to  understand  them;  they  must 
nowadays  be  sometimes  unhappy  because 
every  one  is  trying  to.  Privacy,  both  of  per 
son  and  of  thoughts,  may  be  as  much  their 
right  as  ours.  We  must  be  careful  how  we 
fumble  with  their  souls. 

Apprehensive  grown-ups  must,  of  course, 
remember  that  some  of  the  simplicity  and  ro 
mance  of  their  childhood  has  necessarily  gone 
forever.  No  danger  can  now  threaten  a  child 


246        American  Towns  and  People 

equal  to  that  of  the  old  high  bicycle.  No 
little  boy  to-day  can  make  it  the  goal  of  his  am 
bition  to  drive  the  horse-car  down  the  tracks 
in  Main  Street;  there  will  soon  be  children 
who  have  never  seen  a  horse.  These  same 
nervous  people  may  also  safely  count  on  the 
resistance,  conscious  and  unconscious,  of  the 
American  child  itself.  It  is  amazing  how 
racy  of  the  soil  that  person  is.  He  reverts  to 
type  as  do  the  lower  animals  or  garden  flowers. 
Train  him  with  foreign  masters  or  governesses 
as  you  like,  he  has  moments  when  he  snaps 
back.  His  speech  is  an  example.  He  may 
for  a  few  of  the  tenderer  years,  if  he  is  care 
fully  isolated,  be  master  of  the  low,  well- 
modulated  tones  of  England.  But  the  mo 
ment  he  goes  to  school  his  speech  gains  at  once 
the  tang  of  the  streets,  or  of  the  gutter  if  you 
wish  to  be  emphatic.  His  nasal  tones  cut  the 
circumambient  air  and  his  R's  rasp.  It  is 
something  stronger  than  himself,  some  germ 
that  floats  everywhere.  Later,  at  college  or 
after,  he  may  discipline  his  tongue  into  the 
best  manner  of  our  own  pleasant  American 
language.  But  he  must  have  sown  his  lin 
guistic  wild  oats  on  the  Bowery. 

The  American  child  resists  manners,  too, 
and  sometimes  even  growing  up  does  not  alter 
this  frame  of  mind.  Here  in  America  little 
boys  shake  hands  and  little  girls  courtesy  verj;; 


The  Am.erlcan  Child  247 

much  in  the  way  of  animals  trained  by  fear. 
And  no  American  child  will,  of  its  own  voli 
tion,  ever  say,  "Good  morning,"  or,  "How 
d'ye  do?"  to  any  grown-up.  Foreign  chil 
dren  seem  by  comparison  unnatural  little  mon 
sters  of  courtesy.  And  the  Latin  languages, 
elegant  and  concise,  give  children  speaking 
them  an  exaggerated  appearance  of  poise  and 
polish.  There  was  an  undue  amount  of 
clamor  and  shouting  in  a  uniformed  line  of 
Venetian  school-boys  on  their  way  to  church, 
and  a  child  of  perhaps  ten  spoke  up. 

"La  calma,  signori!"  he  urged,  with  mock 
seriousness.  "Calmness,  gentlemen!" 

An  acid  little  girl  of  six,  on  the  tramcar 
at  Rome  with  her  nurse,  passed  by  a  building 
where  huge  posters  advertised  an  exhibition 
of  modern  painting. 

"That  wouldn't  interest  me,"  remarked 
nurse. 

"It  interests  others,"  answered  the  little  girl, 
coldly. 

Perhaps  we  may  be  glad  that  our  children 
are  more  natural.  There  is  a  kind  of  wild- 
ness  still  in  the  American  soil.  And  children, 
who  are  born  conservatives,  have  a  deep- 
seated  love  for  what  is  indigenous.  They  are 
the  custodians  of  the  American  note.  A  lit 
tle  ten-year-old  boy  at  our  most  fashionable 
seaside  resort  comes  to  mind.  He  was  one 


248        American  Towns  and  People 

of  those  millionaire  babies,  fabled  in  the  Sun 
day  supplements,  reared  in  luxury,  domiciled 
in  palaces.  And  when  the  Fourth  of  July 
came  there  was  a  terrific  scene  (from  which 
he  emerged  victorious)  because  the  one  thing 
he  insisted  on  doing  was  to  sell  a  pale,  watery 
lemonade  for  a  cent  a  glass  from  a  small  stand 
which  he  was  going  to  erect  outside  the  great 
gates  of  his  father's  place  on  Bellevue  Ave 
nue!  Within  him  deep  called  to  deep;  by 
instinct  he  knew  that  he  could  not  rightly 
grow  up  as  an  American  unless  he  had  at 
least  once  performed  all  the  traditional  rights 
of  American  boyhood,  as  poor  boys  and  coun 
try  boys  and  slum  boys  were  everywhere  per* 
forming  them. 

Has  the  statement  been  too  long  delayed 
that  American  children  are  the  finest  in  the 
world?  They  are  not  to  be  held  responsible 
for  the  theories  and  follies  of  their  elders. 
They  want  their  own  way — naturally,  if  they 
can  get  it.  They  are  not  much  concerned 
with  their  complexes.  They  probably  do  not 
take  their  art-life  very  seriously — little  girls 
may  enjoy  dancing  barefoot  on  the  green 
sward,  but  they  probably  think  it  silly  to  speak 
of  it  as  expressing  their  personalities.  If  they 
have  more  liberty  than  they  once  had,  let  us 
merely  hope  that  it  makes  them  happier. 


The  American   Child  249 

And  let  us  start  a  modest  catalogue  of  their 
merits. 

To  begin  with,  they  are  probably  the  clean 
est  children  in  the  world.  We  are  the  most 
bathing  race  since  the  Romans;  we  exceed 
them  in  the  number  of  tubs  if  not  in  the  fervor 
of  our  ablutions.  St.  James  the  Less,  so  the 
Golden  Legend  records  in  his  praise,  from 
childhood  "never  baigned"  and  was  by  this 
known  to  be  holy.  Even  among  his  fellow- 
boys  he  would  obtain  less  recognition  now. 
American  children  should  be  the  healthiest  in 
the  world.  They  are  the  most  generously  fed, 
and  nowhere  in  the  world  is  the  battle  more 
fierce  against  the  germs  that  threaten  them. 
Latin  children  may  sit  up  with  their  parents 
and  make  a  good  meal  at  nine  in  the  even 
ing,  enlivening  it  with  a  cup  of  generous  wine. 
It  doesn't  seem  to  hurt  them.  But  our  dar 
lings,  though  we  allow  them  great  liberty  in 
manners,  are  in  bed  early.  They  resemble  St. 
James  the  Less  in  that  he  never  drank  wine, 
mead,  or  cider.  Their  milk  is  certified  and 
their  water  boiled.  Their  food  is  chosen  for 
them  according  to  articles  by  popular  doctors 
in  the  women's  magazines.  It  would  be  sheer 
perverseness  on  their  part  not  to  be  well. 

And  we  adore  them,  frankly  and  without 
embarrassment.  It  may  safely  be  predicted 


250        American  Towns  and  People 

that  children  will  never  be  nationalized  in 
America,  however  much  their  bringing  up  by 
government  agencies  might,  scientifically,  be 
to  their  advantage.  Free  love,  that  goal  of 
so  many  radical  futures,  may  have  to  be  given 
up  just  because  parents,  both  men  and  women, 
want  their  children  for  their  own.  Of  course 
everywhere  in  the  world  there  are  to-day 
women  who  are  inclined  to  wish  children 
were  possible  without  having  undignified  re 
course  to  a  father,  so  high  above  all  other 
loves  does,  with  them,  the  maternal  stand. 
We  have  lately  on  the  stage  seen  Madame 
Nazimova  and  Miss  Marie  Doro  go  insane 
over  this  wish  of  the  young  girl,  not  at  all  to 
have  a  husband,  but  to  have  children.  But 
American  fathers,  though  little  inclined  to  the 
miracle  of  motherless  children,  value  their 
offspring  with  a  spontaneity  and  a  lack  of 
self-consciousness  which  in  many  parts  of  the 
earth  would  be  astonishing.  In  short,  no  one 
in  America  need  apologize  for  making  a  fool 
of  himself  over  children. 

The  American  army  has  given  us  an  en 
gaging  proof  of  this.  In  all  the  reports  that 
came  from  France  one  of  the  most  charming 
things  to  hear  was  the  way  our  boys  had  made 
pals  with  the  French  children.  The  little 
ones  adored  these  strange,  good-natured,  good- 
looking  men,  who  had  such  a  passion  for 


The  American   Child 

washing  in  cold  water  and  smelled  so  nice. 
The  boys  wanted  to  help  the  mothers  of  these 
children;  they  were  not  too  proud  to  offer  at 
once  to  do  "chores"  about  the  house.  They 
made  Franco-American  friendship  a  real 
thing.  Individuals,  companies,  regiments, 
adopted  orphans.  Some  day  they  will  bring 
them  back  to  America,  and  the  prettiest, 
sweetest  sentimental  comedy  will  be  played  as 
the  French  boys  and  girls  grow  up — La  Fille 
du  Regiment  done  over  to  suit  our  case. 

Even  in  the  occupied  districts  of  Germany 
our  army,  which  has  been  able  to  resist  every 
thing  else,  has  found  it  hard  to  resist  the  chil 
dren.  Perhaps  little  Hans  and  Gretchen 
when  they  grow  up  may  find  it  fairly  easy  to 
think  well  of  us,  if  they  are  only  allowed  to 
cling  to  their  childhood's  memories  of  a  good- 
looking  khaki-clad  American  boy  holding 
them  upon  his  knee. 

At  home  the  war  taught  us  something  about 
our  children.  They  were  so  sensitive  to  pa 
triotism!  They  were  so  generous  of  their 
small  funds  and  their  little  strength!  Thou 
sands  of  orphans  in  France  have  been  adopted 
by  school-children  here.  Across  the  seas  go 
letters,  and,  when  the  postal  regulations  allow, 
shoes  and  clothing,  sometimes  sewed  by  little 
American  girls'  fingers.  And  back  come  gay 
foreign  picture  post-cards  and  words  in  funny 


252        American   Towns  and  People 

childish  writing  that  try  to  express  the  grati 
tude  of  all  France.  Little  stands  along  our 
streets  where  on  Saturday  afternoon  lemonade 
and  rather  withered  nosegays  are  sold  "for 
the  French  orphans"  make  you  smile,  and 
for  that  instant  believe  in  international  friend 
ships  and  the  future  of  the  world. 

Whatever  his  family  may  be,  the  child  of 
foreign  parents  is  an  American.  And  he  is 
the  great  Americanizer.  The  doctrine  he 
carries  home  from  school  he  imposes  upon 
them.  We  may  feel  sorry  that  when  they 
might  have  two  languages  these  foreign  chil 
dren  are  willing  to  have  only  one — American. 
But  the  sturdy  impulse  to  be  real  citizens  of 
the  country  where  they  are  to  live  is  worth 
more  than  the  dual  ornament  of  tongues. 
Little  Giovanni,  who  insists  on  being  called 
Joe,  and  Ignaz,  who  would  like  to  be  known 
as  Mike,  we  should  be  proud  of. 

Are  we  not  proud  of  them — as  of  all  Ameri 
can  children?  Do  we  not  fill  our  magazines 
with  jokes  made  from  children's  clever  say 
ings,  and  cover  our  colored  supplements  with 
their  engaging  doings?  (Oh,  where  in  the 
snows  of  yester-year  wanders  Buster  Brown?) 
Has  any  mere  short  chapter  a  chance  to  say 
even  half  that  should  be  said  about  our  dar 
ling,  the  American  Child? 


The  Society  Woman 

IN  treating  of  the  American  "Society 
Woman"  we  approach  a  figure  epic,  yet 
somehow  indefinable.  It  is  difficult  to  say 
just  what  she  is,  yet  impossible  to  say  just  what 
she  isn't.  She  is  the  glittering  figure  of 
triumphant  Columbia,  incredibly  lovely  and 
well  dressed,  not  only  devoted  passionately  to 
pleasure  and  the  arts,  but  in  the  vanguard  of 
a  thousand  "movements"  (for  the  moment  let 
us  be  no  more  precise  than  this  as  to  which 
way  they  move).  She  is  the  arbiter  of  na 
tional  elegancies  and,  Heaven  knows,  she  may 
be  the  guardian  of  national  destinies.  Let  us 
study  her  with  the  means  at  our  command. 

The  documentary  evidence  first  to  hand  is 
naturally  in  the  newspapers.  The  society 
woman  does  not  shun  publicity;  she  is  in  it,  as 
the  French  say,  like  a  fish  in  water,  not  so 
much  rejoicing  in  the  medium  in  which  she 
swims  as  knowing  no  other.  For  the  last 
forty  years  at  least  the  press  has  been  cele 
brating  her.  The  newspapers  should  know, 
yet  their  facts  seem  strangely  at  variance  with 
those  observed  at  first  hand.  Even  now  so- 

253 


254        American  Towns  and  People 

ciety  reporters  present  the  view  that  the  ladies 
whom  they  advertise  are  a  race  apart,  kept  in 
cotton-wool  except  when  they  emerge  for  their 
purely  frivolous  activities.  We  still  read  this 
kind  of  thing  in  the  papers:  "Society  girl 
gives  up  society  to  study  nursing,"  "Society 
woman  gives  up  society  for  landscape  garden 
ing,"  "Society  favorite  gives  up  society  for 
community  work."  But  the  society  woman 
never  gives  up  anything,  except  an  occasional 
husband  en  passant.  (And  even  here,  in  the 
best  circles,  a  woman  does  not  divorce  one  hus 
band  until  she  is  happily  engaged  to  be  mar 
ried  to  the  next.)  Indeed,  the  life  of  a  so 
ciety  woman  is  spent  in  acquisition  rather  than 
renunciation.  She  does  not  give  up  anything 
for  nursing  or  landscape  gardening  or  com 
munity  work;  she  merely  adds  new  activities 
to  her  old.  If  she  takes  to  the  hospital  or  the 
fields  or  the  canteens,  "society" — whatever 
that  term  as  loosely  employed  by  the  reporters 
may  mean — is  already  there  or  soon  will  be. 
She  may  be  more  in  society  than  ever,  and  the 
cynical  may  even  accuse  her  of  nourishing  so 
cial  ambition  at  the  very  heart  of  her  altruism. 
The  stage,  too,  is  responsible  for  much  mis 
apprehension  on  this  point.  The  straight 
forward,  virile  hero  so  often  wonders  whether 
the  bewildering  "society  girl"  whom  he  loves 
can  ever  be  willing  to  "give  up  society" — the 


Women  of  the  highest  position  feel  deeply  the  beauty  of  the  Bolshevik  doctrine. 


The  Society  Woman  255 

phrase  is  by  now  almost  traditional — for  his 
sake.     In  a  well-constructed  play  she  is  will 
ing,  and  just  previous  to  being  locked  in  his 
strong  Western   arms   she   usually  confesses 
with   an   impassioned    revulsion   that  she   is 
"tired  of  teas."     Except  among  almost  over- 
sophisticated  writers  ateas"  seem  the  chief,  if 
not  the  only,  dissipation  of  all  society  women 
but  the  most  vampirish  and  corrupt.     Tea  in 
deed,  which  is  even  now  often  described  in 
the  quaint  nineteenth-century  way  as  "pink," 
is  the  target  for  incessant  satirical  shafts.     In 
a  recent  play  of  triangular  family  life,  the 
lover,  a  dissipated  fellow,  had  the  habit  of 
"teaing"  on  a  regular  day  every  week;  this, 
indeed,  appeared  to  be  his  chief,  if  not  only 
opportunity  of  seeing  the  fair  one,  and  even 
here  the  husband,  rushing  home  to  the  tea- 
table,  as  we  are  asked  to  suppose  fashionable 
New  York  husbands  do,  was  often  present. 
Now,  as  the  lover's  attention  was  wholly  pour 
le  bon  motif  as  it  were,  it  is  only  the  more  un 
likely  that  through  the  years  he  would  have 
been  put  off  with  tea,  and  not  insisted  on  lunch 
or  dinner. 

Not  that  society  women  would  not  like  to 
have  men  to  tea!  Young  foreign  gentlemen 
are  generally  available  and  often  cozy  at  this 
hour,  but  there  are  never  foreigners  enough 
and  tea-drinking  has,  as  a  matter  of  brutal 


256        American  Towns  and  People 

fact,  been  successfully  resisted  by  almost  every 
native  son. 

As  for  "teas"  as  social  functions,  every  so 
ciety  woman  is  ready  to  give  them  up,  even 
without  being  importuned  to  do  so  by  any 
Western  hero.  To  frequent  nothing  but 
"teas"  is  to  confess  social  failure.  "Teas"  of 
course  remain  a  constant  and  inexpensive 
pleasure  and  method  of  hospitality  in  the  life 
of  those  content  to  be  merely  artistic,  but  no 
society  woman  worth  her  salt  is  content  to  be 
merely  anything. 

If  the  newspapers  and  the  stage  fail  to  re 
flect  faithfully  the  richly  varied  pleasure  life 
of  the  society  woman,  they  do  occasionally 
recognize  her  unbending  and  tireless  physique. 
In  a  comedy  exposing  the  life  of  Long  Island 
country  houses  the  exhausted  male  guests  had, 
at  about  two  in  the  morning,  sought  sanctuary 
as  they  supposed  in  the  sitting-room  of  one  of 
their  number  (it  is  a  pleasure  to  note  the  rich 
ness  of  equipment  which  permits  each  guest 
parlor,  bedroom,  and  bath) ,  but  were  there  in 
vaded  by  the  charming  rollicking  hostess  and 
the  ladies  of  the  week-end  party  who  brightly 
insisted  upon  bridge  till  dawn.  The  endur 
ance  of  society  women  is  beyond  belief.  As 
the  crowds  pour  forth  from  the  theaters  it  is 
they,  clear-eyed  and  sparkling,  who  flog  their 
weary  male  companions  to  the  suppers  and  the 


The  Society  Woman  257 

cabarets.  And  they  are  up  in  the  morning  as 
early  as  the  men,  regulating  their  households, 
giving  and  receiving  invitations,  hustling  their 
secretaries,  who,  not  being  society  women,  are 
sometimes  tired,  and  arranging  to  cope  with 
home  charity,  foreign  war  relief,  suffrage,  art, 
and  literature,  not  to  speak  of  massage,  hair- 
dressing,  and  psychotherapy.  If  they  are  ever 
weary  they  are  too  gallant  to  show  it.  Only 
a  year  or  so  ago  a  lady  who  had  dined,  gone 
to  the  play,  supped  and  danced,  insisted  at  one 
in  the  morning  on  being  deposited  at  the  Eagle 
Hut  where,  in  evening  dress,  jewels,  and  full 
war  paint,  she  proceeded  to  do  her  daily  duty 
by  cleaning  up  the  canteen.  Society  women 
are  indeed  an  imperishable  race — it  is  not 
probable  that  in  the  more  lightly  working,  less 
fashionable  classes  any  such  stamina  exists. 
Noblesse  oblige;  and  the  high  resolve  to  pur 
sue  an  exalted  career  gives  courage  and 
strength  to  meet  its  demands. 

The  newspapers,  though  they  may  not  real 
ize  it,  make  no  great  account  of  exclusiveness; 
they  speak  always  of  being  a  society  woman 
as  being  really  a  question  only  of  willingness 
to  take  up  that  career.  This  has  made  it  pos 
sible  for  journalists  to  write  of  "prominent 
society  women"  in  the  remotest,  smallest  ham 
let  of  the  land.  It  is  really,  in  the  language 
of  the  day,  no  more  than  the  conventional 


258        American  Towns  and  People 

tribute  to  respectability.  In  the  press  it  is  al 
ways  a  society  woman  who  has  six  ladies  to 
lunch,  the  decorations  being  jonquils,  a  society 
woman  who  organizes  the  knitting  club  for 
Esthonian  orphans,  and  a  prominent  society 
woman  who  is  smashed  up  driving  her  Ford 
car  over  the  grade  crossing.  One  must  pro 
test  against  the  theory  that  all  such  richness 
of  experience  is  only  within  the  reach  of  one 
class,  unless  indeed  that  class  be  so  broadened 
that  all  pretense  of  exclusiveness  is  gone. 
And  though  the  last  decade,  including  the  war 
period,  has  dealt  hard  blows  to  exclusiveness, 
yet  it  must  still  be  recognized  as  one  of  the 
society  woman's  most  sparkling  jewels. 

Society,  of  course,  has  always  existed  in 
America,  since  the  stately  days  of  Lady  Wash 
ington,  when  really  great  people  were,  even  in 
a  world  made  temporarily  safe  for  democracy, 
given  by  the  courtesy  of  common  speech,  un 
official  titles  indicative  of  their  being  society 
women.  Ladies  in  Philadelphia  to-day  will 
tell  you  that  they  were  brought  up  in  a  world 
more  insistent  on  birth  and  sixteen  quarterings 
(if  that  be  a  heraldic  or  mathematical  possi 
bility)  than  any  society  outside  the  Viennese 
aristocracy.  And,  indeed,  it  may  be  so.  But 
this  had  no  great  effect  upon  the  free  republic 
of  the  west.  It  was  not  until  the  newspapers 
all  over  the  country  began  to  exploit  New 


The  Society  Woman  259 

York  society  that  all  America,  with  an  eye  on 
the  metropolis,  began  to  organize  itself  as  the 
sheep  and  the  goats. 

Exclusiveness  was  the  contribution  of  the 
'eighties  to  nation-wide  snobbishness.  The 
idea  of  "The  Four  Hundred,"  a  published  list 
of  those  who  could  be  described  as  really  in 
New  York  society,  was  a  stroke  of  genius. 
And  an  even  greater  stroke  was  the  later  re 
vision  of  this  list  to  "The  One  Hundred  and 
Fifty,"  thus  publicly  expelling  into  outer 
darkness  those  who  had,  by  the  earlier  too 
great  generosity,  been  made  household  names 
throughout  the  land.  Society,  indeed,  bristled 
with  redoubts,  which  the  ambitious  were  con 
tinually  storming.  There  were  subscription 
dances  with  lists  artificially  and  heart-break- 
ingly  short.  There  is  an  incredible  passage  in 
the  late  Ward  McAllister's  book  in  which  he 
describes  how  applicants  regularly  came  to 
him,  with  documents  to  prove  their  ancestry 
or  their  financial  standing  (or  more  rarely,  but 
happily,  both)  and  plead  humbly  for  recogni 
tion.  These  were  the  days  when  to  be  seen  at 
a  certain  great  lady's  house  or  in  her  opera 
box  insured  a  young  man  free  dinners  for  the 
next  month.  And  it  is  a  scant  forty  years  ago 
that  one  famous  fancy-dress  ball  of  fabulous 
extravagance  landed  a  great  family  safely  in 
the  fold  where  they  now  have  the  air  of  hav- 


260        American  Towns  and  People 

ing  originally  built  the  inclosure.  For  weeks 
before  the  fateful  evening  the  whole  country 
waited — even  the  humble  Ohio  agriculturist, 
spitting  at  the  depot  store,  was  fully  apprised 
by  his  newspaper  of  all  there  was  at  stake. 
And  even  he  must  have  experienced  at  least  a 
relief  from  strain  when  it  became  known  that 
all  the  best  people  had  gone  to  the  party. 
Snobbishness  was  stimulated  throughout  the 
whole  land. 

But  these  were  indeed  simple  days,  the  as 
sault  of  society  was  a  clear  military  and 
strategic  problem.  Now  it  is  much  more 
complicated.  Social  position  is  in  no  one 
hand  to  bestow;  instead  it  flies  like  will-o'-the- 
wisp  before  the  pursuer.  Even  ten  years  ago 
there  were  signs  of  the  beginning  of  the  end  of 
exclusiveness.  About  that  time  a  lady,  famous 
for  her  wit  and  independence,  asked  a  young 
gentleman,  then  new  to  New  York,  to  dine. 
He  arrived,  as  it  happened,  early,  and  his 
hostess  confided  to  him  that  he  must  be  compli 
mented  by  being  asked  to  one  of  her  very  best 
parties. 

'They  tell  me,"  she  said,  with  a  detached 
air  but  an  odd  mocking  light  in  her  eye,  "that 
there  are  only  five  women  in  New  York  who 
are  really  fashionable.  I  don't  know  about 
that,  but  at  any  rate  they  are  all  coming  to 
night!" 


The  Society  Woman  261 

The  young  man  glowed  with  pleasure,  and 
his  hostess  watched  him  with  amusement. 
Ten,  not  five,  ladies  came  to  dinner,  all,  to  his 
poor  ignorant  eye,  equally  fashionable! 

There  is,  of  course,  one  class  in  the  modern 
community  which  feels  quite  competent  to  ap 
praise  social  position,  even  to  award  it. 
These  are  head  waiters,  who  in  the  fashionable 
restaurants  herd  the  elect  near  the  draughty 
entrance  (in  what  to  the  unlearned  would 
seem  the  worst  places).  A  position  with 
waiters  is  by  no  means  to  be  despised — a  lady 
constantly  seen  at  the  best  restaurant  tables 
stands  a  fair  chance  of  being  ultimately  wel 
comed  at  the  best  private  boards.  Of  course 
many  ambitious  ladies  unhappily  never  ad 
vance  further  than  the  best  head  waiters.  But 
the  best  head  waiters — they  may  be  assured- 
are  much  more  agreeable  companions  than 
anything  short  of  the  very  best  diners-out  in 
society. 

Social  position  is  truly  an  elusive  sprite. 
Foreign  observers  were  wont  to  say  that 
Americans,  and,  indeed,  all  the  untitled  in 
habitants  of  all  republics,  were  never  sure  of 
their  position.  Ladies  in  America  are  dis 
covering  at  last  that,  failing  patents  of  nobility 
or  any  authoritative  list  of  the  Four  Hundred, 
one  of  the  best  ways  of  making  people  believe 
you  have  a  social  position  is  to  behave  as  if  you 


262        American   Towns  and  People 

had  one.  We  may  be  thought  to  cite  a  case 
of  extreme  aplomb  in  the  lovely  lady  who  ar 
rived  an  hour  late  for  a  dinner-party  on  a 
night  when  she  had  not  been  asked,  bringing 
with  her  two  other  guests  whom  she  had  taken 
the  liberty  of  inviting,  but  whose  names  she 
had  forgotten!  Of  course  considerable  per 
sonal  charm  is  needed  to  carry  off  this  sort  of 
thing,  but,  even  so,  indisputable  social  posi 
tion  only  could  render  it  attractive  rather  than 
merely  careless  and  rude. 

Whatever  perturbations  may  come,  a 
woman  of  fashion  will  always  be  a  woman  of 
fashion  however  Protean  her  materializations. 
And  yet  it  is  fair  to  say  that  the  old  simple  days 
of  blue-book  lists  of  those  in  society  have  gone. 
The  war  finished  a  destruction  already  begun. 
Society  is  not  so  much  occupied  now  with 
keeping  people  out  as  with  dragging  them  in 
— that  is,  people  who  have  the  appearance,  the 
tastes,  and  the  money,  and  will  consent  to  live 
a  society  life.  The  portals  are  not,  of  course, 
really  left  unguarded ;  there  are  a  great  many 
of  what  might,  perhaps,  be  termed  "limbering 
up"  exercises  which  candidates  are  put 
through.  There  are  parties  to  be  given,  com 
mittees  joined,  and  money  liberally  con 
tributed  to  them.  The  process,  though  it 
seems  easier,  is  really  longer  than  of  old,  and 
in  the  confused  state  of  society  there  is  always, 


The  Society  Woman  263 

even  when  you  seem  to  be  in,  the  agonizing 
doubt  as  to  whether,  after  all,  you  really  are  in 
— in  the  old  days  a  card  to  Mrs.  Blank's  ball 
stuck  in  your  bureau  mirror  was  so  much  more 
reassuring. 

Reference  having  been  made  to  liberal  con 
tributions,  there  is  perhaps  place  here  for  a 
generous  parenthesis  on  money,  its  use  and 
abuse.  It  cannot  be  too  often  insisted  on,  in 
any  serious  study  of  our  best  people,  that 
money,  at  least  a  decade  ago,  became  so  plenti 
ful  in  America,  and  especially  in  New  York, 
that  it  could  no  longer  of  itself  confer  social 
distinction.  Time  was  when  to  build  a  palace 
and  serve  nightingales'  tongues  for  dinner  was 
enough.  But  hostesses  became  more  numer 
ous  than  worth-while  guests.  One  of  the 
town's  very  most  fashionable  women,  whose 
own  income  was  only  a  scant  $200,000  a  year, 
put  it  well  when  she  asked,  fastidiously: 

"Why  should  we  wish  to  have  what  every 
Pittsburgh  millionaire  can  have?" 

Ambitious  people  with  money  should  not, 
however,  unload  it  too  hastily  (not,  at  any 
rate,  just  on  reading  the  above  paragraph). 
It  has  its  uses.  Society  wromen  still  feel  a 
warm,  pleasant  sensation  in  proximity  to  a 
large  new  fortune.  But  they  want  to  take  the 
climber's  gold  on  terms  consistent  with  self- 
respect  and  dignity. 


264        American  Towns  and  People 

Ten  years  ago  two  ladies — Mrs.  Doe  and 
Mrs.  Roe,  shall  we  say? — started  to  mount  the 
New  York  ladder.  Mrs.  Doe  abounded  in 
palaces  and  luxury.  At  her  table  you  ate 
nothing  in  season.  At  her  country  house  the 
bathrooms  contained  always  eight  kinds  of 
mouth-wash  in  rare  decorated  bottles,  and  six 
kinds  of  rouge  in  gold  boxes  were  provided 
on  the  dressing-tables.  It  was  occasionally 
suggested  to  prominent  young  women  of  taste 
that  they  might  turn  interior  decorators,  for  a 
commission,  and  do  a  room  or  two  in  one  of 
the  palaces.  At  Christmas-time  the  leaders  of 
society  sometimes  discovered  a  lovely  diamond 
brooch  nestling  in  a  bunch  of  white  violets 
with  Mrs.  Doe's  card — this  was  generally  re 
turned  with  a  statement  that  the  recipient's 
husband  did  not  permit  her  to  receive  gifts, 
etc. 

Mrs.  Roe  lived  in  a  much  smaller  house. 
Her  dinners  often  did  not  begin  with  the  real 
Russian  caviar.  She  had  no  country  place. 
Her  entertaining  was  extremely  simple,  some 
times  just  ten  or  twelve  people  pigging  it  in 
her  private  car  to  Palm  Beach,  where  as  often 
as  not  they  themselves  paid  for  their  rooms 
and  breakfasts  at  the  hotel.  She  bestowed  no 
jewels,  and  yet  she  is  now  called  by  her 
Christian  name  (by  the  way,  both  ladies  under 
discussion  are  Christian)  by  women  who  have 


The  Society  Woman  265 

by  now  quite  forgotten  that  Mrs.  Doe  ever 
tried  to  know  them.  And  the  simple  secret 
is  this — that  Mrs.  Roe  subscribed  to  every 
body's  charity  and  uplift  movement  while 
Mrs.  Doe  did  not.  No  society  woman  could 
get  at  Mrs.  Doe's  money  decently,  and  on  any 
other  terms  no  one  wanted  it.  If  the  reports 
that  came  in  of  London  and  Continental  ante 
bellum  society  are  true,  it  is  humbly  submitted 
that  the  moral  tale  of  Mrs.  Doe  and  Mrs.  Roe 
is  very  much  to  the  credit  of  our  American 
world  of  fashion. 

Charity  and  uplift  are  in  the  firm  grip  of 
society  women.  The  newspapers  during  the 
past  years  of  war  have  duly  noted  this;  every 
female  who  enlisted  as  a  Red  Cross  nurse, 
organized  a  relief  committee,  or  hoed  a  radish- 
bed  was  promptly  described  as  a  society 
woman  giving  up  society  to  do  so.  There 
was,  of  course,  a  great  deal  of  folly  in  war 
work,  a  certain  amount  of  what  is  bitterly  de 
scribed  sometimes  as  making  carnival  on  the 
ruins  of  civilization.  Social  ambition  led 
many  women  on,  and  doubtless  a  sheer  love  of 
pleasure  organized  many  a  dance  and  bazar 
for  the  benefit  of  the  tortured  victims  of  the 
Hun.  When  the  time  comes  to  write  the  his 
tory  of  war  relief,  a  certain  number  of  its 
pages  will  inevitably  be  comic  relief.  It 
would  be  pleasant,  even  now,  to  tell  the  story 


266        American   Towns  and  People 

of  the  ambitious  lady  who  failed  to  get  on  any 
of  the  really  fashionable  war  committees,  and 
ultimately  made  a  delightful  place  for  herself 
by  the  fortunate  discovery  of  the  obscure  but 
deserving  race  of  Uro-Russicks  and  the  im 
mediate  organization  of  a  committee  for 
their  relief.  Such  anecdotes  prove  little.  It 
would  be  narrow  and  uncomprehending  to 
deny  the  realness  and  vitality  of  the  emotion 
which  set  the  best-advertised  women  of  our 
country  to  work.  Perhaps  the  fact  that  their 
gowns  came  from  Paris  did  heighten  their 
sympathies  for  France.  But,  in  any  case, 
when  the  whirlwind  of  our  national  indigna 
tion  rose  to  its  noble  and  passionate  height, 
these  daughters  of  America  were  gallantly  in 
movement  with  it. 

The  justice,  too,  must  be  done  them  to  note 
the  fact  that  war  relief  sought  them  as  much  as 
they  sought  war  relief.  The  American  public 
is  the  most  sensitive  in  the  world  to  advertise 
ment  and,  next  to  actresses  (who  still,  in  some 
hard-shell  circles,  inspire  a  vague  distrust), 
society  women  were  the  best  known.  A  hard- 
headed  business  man,  organizing  a  war  com 
mittee,  knew  that  .he  had  to  have  well-known 
names  on  his  list  (and  in  addition  a  compe 
tent  salaried  office  stafl  to  do  the  work).  He 
requisitioned  a  dozen  society  women  in  prime 
condition  just  as  he  ordered  white  paper  and 


The  Society  Woman  267 

blotters  and  typewriting  machines.  It  almost 
seemed  as  if  the  oftener  a  society  woman's 
name  appeared  on  committee  lists  the  more 
valuable  it  was.  So  no  one  should  blame  them 
if  self-sacrificing  patriots  went  on  every  com 
mittee  that  offered. 

If  it  is  the  fashion  to  be  patriotic  it  is  also 
in  less  degree  the  vogue  to  be  intelligent. 
This  must  not  be  confused  with  being  ar 
tistic.  For  a  long  time  now  society  women  in 
America  have  vibrated  sensitively  at  the  touch 
of  Art.  This  has  been  immensely  serviceable 
in  the  civilizing  of  the  American  social 
wilderness.  When  they  packed  their  trunks 
for  the  homeward  voyage  from  Europe  they 
put  in,  every  time,  a  good  deal  of  taste.  So 
ciety  women  have  learned  to  deal  competently 
with  painting,  sculpture,  furniture,  and  all 
the  decorative  arts.  They  have  reclaimed  our 
domestic  architecture  until  all  over  the  land 
the  new  American  "homes"  average  higher  in 
taste  and  luxury  than  the  new  habitations  of 
any  country  in  the  world.  They  are  introduc 
ing  actors  to  other  people  who  are  not  actors, 
a  movement  fraught  with  hope  for  the  future 
of  that  race.  They  entertain  artists  of  every 
description  at  their  tables.  They  form  a  large 
support  for  concerts  and  they  are  the  backbone 
— as  may  be  seen — of  the  opera.  A  long  and 
exquisite  passage  might,  it  is  obvious,  be 


268        American   Towns  and  People 

written  on  the  curious  fact  that  high  social 
position  always  goes  with  a  delicate  flair  for 
art,  foreign  art  preferred.  But  it  was  when 
society  women  annexed  intelligence  and 
public  interests  that  the  old-fashioned  mem 
bers  of  good  society  saw  the  beginning  of  the 
end. 

The  suffrage  movement,  from  the  moment 
that  it  involved  the  younger  leaders,  threat 
ened  society  with  the  vogue  of  intelligence. 
It  is  nothing  now  for  a  woman  of  fashion  to 
be  on  a  state  board  of  lunacy  or  a  commission 
for  subtropical  bacteriological  study  or  a 
committee  for  propaganda  of  American  ideals 
in  Portuguese  East  Africa.  Society  women 
feel  deeply  on  educational  and  sociological 
questions.  Some  of  them  constantly  keep  on 
the  premises  an  editor  or  two  of  some  intel 
lectual  weekly  or  one  of  the  fashionable 
socialists.  Women  of  the  highest  position 
feel  deeply  the  beauty  of  the  Bolshevik  doc 
trine  and  burst  into  tears  if  any  one  talks 
of  intervention  in  Russia.  When  the  police 
break  up  red  flag  meetings  they  are  sure  to 
find  some  society  women  in  the  best  boxes. 
It  may  serve  as  an  encouragement  or  as  a 
warning  to  revolutionists,  who  may  take  their 
choice,  but  it  may  be  prophesied  that  if  Soviets 
are  ever  set  up  in  America  they  will  be 


The  Society  Woman  269 

"Councils  of  Workmen  and  Soldiers  and  So 
ciety  Women." 

This  is,  of  course,  the  extreme  and  serious 
view,  as  all  students  of  society  women  must  ad 
mit.  Things  have  not  everywhere  gone  so 
far.  But  the  intellect  and  the  war  combined 
have,  however,  already  worked  revolutionary 
changes  in  the  habits  and  customs  of  the  sub 
ject  of  this  article.  It  is,  for  example,  no 
longer  de  rlgeur  to  talk  all  through  the  opera; 
in  fact,  to  do  so  is  really  old-fashioned.  Peo 
ple,  if  they  like,  remain  till  the  end  with  al 
most  no  embarrassment;  in  the  old  days  one 
of  the  leaders  was  alleged  to  rise  in  her  box 
precisely  at  the  same  hour,  no  matter  what  was 
happening  on  the  stage,  and  say,  with  the  all 
too  sweet  air  of  one  already  martyred  and 
sainted  for  music's  sake:  "It's  half  past  ten. 
I  should  think  it  would  be  all  right  for  us 
to  go  now." 

People  even  arrive  on  time  for  the  opera 
sometimes.  How  old-fashioned  already  seem 
the  days  when  one  of  the  hostesses  most  highly 
placed  always  sat  down  to  dinner  on  her  opera 
nights  at  the  exact  hour  when  the  curtain  rose 
at  the  Metropolitan,  and  complained  bitterly 
of  the  German  operas  which  began  at  seven 
forty-five,  necessitating  dining  at  that  uncom 
fortable  hour! 


270        American   Towns  and  People 

Intellectual  society  women  are  devoted  to 
the  theater,  too,  and  often  have  plans  to  uplift 
it.  But  the  feeling  unquestionably  prevails 
that  a  theater  which  began  at  nine  or  nine- 
thirty  could  be  more  easily  uplifted.  People 
are  willing,  indeed,  to  dine  early — say  at 
seven-thirty  or  seven  forty-five  if  they  are  go 
ing  to  the  play — but  somehow  even  that  sacri 
fice  doesn't  seem  to  bring  them  there  for  much 
of  the  first  act. 

This  picture  of  society  in  the  ardors  and 
sufferings  of  a  transition  period  is,  however, 
not  meant  to  imply  that  ladies  live  without 
pleasure.  Entertainments  were  smaller  dur 
ing  the  war;  let  us,  indeed,  freely  admit  that 
they  were  on  a  higher  intellectual  and  spirit 
ual  plane,  but  fairly  continuous.  An  ex 
tremely  pretty  blonde  was  heard  lately  to  re 
mark,  with  an  engaging  naivete : 

"My  husband  and  I  dined  at  home  last  night 
for  the  first  time  in  months,  and  to  my  as 
tonishment  I  find  we  have  an  extremely  good 
cook!" 

It  is  just  possible  to  argue  of  society  that  the 
more  it  changes  the  more  it  is  the  same  thing. 
It  used  to  be  smart  to  be  heavily  engaged 
ahead.  Now  the  fashion  has  changed.  One 
lovely  creature  swears  that  she  never  settles 
before  6  P.  M.  what  she  is  going  to  do  of  an 
evening.  But  as  she  is  always  out  it  must  be 


The  Society  Woman  271 

presumed  that  enough  invitations  come  in 
about  tea-time  so  that  her  pleasure  is  never 
really  curtailed.  Every  one  would  prefer  to 
wait  till  the  last  moment  and  accept  the  best 
thing  that  offers;  not  every  one  dares  take  the 
risk.  But  our  charming  reformer  genuinely 
thinks  she  is  taking  steps  nearer  the  simple 
life. 

Even  when  little  dinners  were  for  the  pur 
pose  of  talking  over  war  work  they  were  still 
little  dinners  and  very  pleasant.  And  it  seems 
likely  that  reconstruction  dinners  will  be 
equally  agreeable — if  the  supply  of  men  holds 
out! 

Here  again,  as  in  any  article  written  on 
American  society  during  the  last  decade  or 
two,  we  touch  that  eternal  and  heart-breaking 
topic,  the  dearth  of  men.  It  is  bad  enough  in 
ordinary  times,  but  war  made  it  worse.  And, 
as  always,  foreigners  gallantly  stepped  into  the 
breach.  The  embassies,  the  committees,  the 
various  high  commissions  all  contributed. 
Society,  when  it  blazed  with  anything,  blazed 
with  uniforms.  And  later  on,  as  men  who 
had  seen  service  began  to  be  invalided  over 
here,  the  supply  increased.  That  many  of 
these  young  gentlemen  were  crippled  and  so 
totally  defenseless  was  a  fact  viewed  almost 
with  equanimity  by  women  of  fashion,  deter 
mined  to  fill  their  opera  boxes  and  their 


272        American   Towns  and  People 

dinner-tables  at  the  cost  even  of  tears  and 
blood. 

Again,  as  so  often  in  the  past,  little  censor 
ship  was  exercised  upon  foreigners — it  is  a  na 
tional  weakness.  One  of  the  notable  social 
successes  of  the  war  season  in  a  great  Eastern 
city  was  a  sleek  swivel-chair  hero  in  khaki,  of 
whom  his  compatriots  continue  darkly  to 
mutter  that  he  was  in  London  a  mere  clerk  of 
sorts  with  no  social  position  at  all.  He  could 
dine  out — and  would — eight  times  a  night  if 
that  were  physically  possible.  And  yet  his 
simple  debut  was  when  a  lady,  whom  a  male 
dinner  guest  had  failed  at  the  eleventh  hour, 
telephoned  a  peremptory  demand  to  the  head 
of  a  foreign  military  mission  to  conscript  and 
send  her  some  one,  something,  anything  male 
that  would  dine,  and  she  would  ask  no  ques 
tions  beyond  inquiring  his  name  when  he 
arrived. 

Society  women  seem  indestructible.  And 
yet  it  would  be  a  rash  man  who  would 
prophesy  that  society  is  as  enduring  as  its  ele 
ments.  Some  of  these  ladies,  as  has  been 
hinted,  mean  to  head  the  Revolution  that  every 
one  is  talking  about.  Others,  with  a  shiver 
down  the  spine  which  is  not  altogether  un 
pleasant,  feel  themselves  already  mounting  the 
tumbrils  with  a  sense  of  kinship  to  the  French 
aristocracy  of  Louis  XVTs  day — and  it  may 


The  Society  Woman  273 

be  guessed  that  it  is  the  ladies  most  recently 
arrived  in  the  sacred  inclosure  of  society  who 
feel  most  strongly  how  like  the  old  nobility 
they  are  going  to  be  in  case  of  trouble. 
Others,  more  prudent,  are  said  to  be  unearth 
ing  the  portraits  of  the  honest  founders  of  the 
family,  proletarian  grandfathers  in  cowhide 
boots  and  overalls,  and  hanging  them  where 
the  mobs  can  see  them  at  once  when  they  smash 
in  the  palace  doors.  Others — and  aren't  they, 
after  all,  the  majority? — mean  to  confront  the 
future  gallantly,  cheerfully,  and  with  our 
characteristic  American  feeling  that  somehow 
the  country  is  all  right  and  that,  whatever  hap 
pens,  every  citizen  has  a  fair  chance  to  come 
to  the  top  or  the  front.  And  that  chance  is  all 
the  society  woman  wants. 

A  great  deal  of  nonsense  is  talked  and 
written  about  society  women — probably  some 
has  been  written  here.  Are  they,  we  had 
better  ask,  any  better  or  worse  than  the  nation 
at  large?  An  American  woman  at  a  great 
party  in  London  was  accosted  by  a  foreign 
gentleman  whom  she  could  not  seem  to  re 
member.  Was  she,  he  asked,  enjoying  the 
party?  She  put  up  her  fan  to  give  privacy 
to  an  instant  of  confidential  coquetry  and  said, 
no,  she  wasn't;  there  were  too  many  royalties 
present.  He  laughed  and  passed  on,  and  her 
horror-stricken  companion  informed  her  that 


274        American  Towns  and  People 

she  had  spoken  in  this  fashion  to  a  well-known 
king!  This  lady,  we  may  be  sure,  will  be 
quite  competent  to  deal  with  a  new  world 
where  there  are  no  royalties.  May  we  not 
humbly  hope  that  the  society  woman  will  per 
sist,  that  she  will  somehow  manage  to  be 
beautiful  and  well-dressed  and  that  she  will 
continue  to  do  her  best  for  America  and  to 
insist  that  America  do  its  best  for  her? 


THE  END. 


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